Great planning starts with the customer

In 2012 the NSW Government launched an integrated planning approach known as the NSW Long Term Transport Master Plan that focused on making the customer the centre of everything we do.

The Master Plan has guided decision making and investment to deliver many enhancements to transport such as introducing Opal, Fixing Country Roads, building light rail across Sydney and in Newcastle, and making transport more accessible for all of our community.

To ensure we are keeping in touch with our customers’ needs and the megatrends affecting our communities we made a commitment in 2012 to review the Master Plan in five years time.

To meet that commitment, the Future Transport Strategy is our new approach to planning transport and engaging our customers. It will be a 20 to 40 year strategy focusing on customer needs and the technological, economic and social changes ahead.

This year as part of developing the Future Transport Strategy that will focus on services and infrastructure for all of NSW, we will also work on renewing a number of important plans covering freight and ports, road safety and disability inclusion.

Future Transport kicked off in 2016 with the first Future Transport Summit. Input from industry, thought leaders, staff and customers who attended this and other collaboration events last year was distilled into the Future Transport Technology Roadmap released in late 2016.

This year we will continue that approach of using new tools for engaging our customers, communities and businesses to develop better plans to meet the future challenges and opportunities.

The Future Transport Technology Roadmap

“Transport is a technology business.”

Andrew Constance, Minister for Transport and Infrastructure

The Future Transport Technology Roadmap is the first step in our journey to put NSW at the forefront of using innovation and emerging technologies to deliver better transport services in NSW.

Launched for feedback on 2 November 2016  and published in April 2017, the Roadmap aims to unlock the full value of our transport networks, and customise and personalise transport services to create a better experience for our customers.

The Roadmap identifies the major technology trends that will shape the future of transport and, through our future transport scenarios, it looks at how people might respond to them. This fed into the development of five technology strategies that will allow us to meet those objectives. 

The five strategies are:

  1. Personalise customer interactions by developing real-time and digital timetable, navigation, customer information and payment platforms
  2. Transform mass transit networks by using automation and dynamic management systems to improve efficiency, boost service frequency, and reduce travel times
  3. Foster shared-use, on-demand services with flexible routes and schedules, to give customers greater choice both in metropolitan and regional areas
  4. Enable connected automated vehicle platforms by continuing to contribute to national standards and regulatory frameworks, and creating the right environment for testing and trial, so we can maximise the early benefits of greater levels of vehicle automation
  5. Create intelligent transport networks managed by data, to better manage network capacity and improve journey reliability.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY ENABLED STRATEGIES
 

Transforming Transport for NSW

To implement the Roadmap, Transport for NSW will also need to transform itself, adopting the practices of technology leaders in other sectors. In particular, we will:

  1. Foster an innovative approach to delivering solutions through co-development of proofs of concepts with a broad range of partners 
  2. Set up a Transport Digital Incubator to work with entrepreneurs and develop, prove and scale innovative products and services based on emerging technology
  3. Cultivate a ‘global hotspot’ for transport data sciences, to encourage creative solutions to transport problems
  4. Enable early and safe adoption of new services built on new technology, by revising regulatory frameworks to remove unnecessary red tape 
  5. Change how transport agencies work internally to minimise bureaucracy. 

For each of those strategies, the Roadmap identifies a set of initial initiatives for immediate focus. These will lay the groundwork for the longer term technology ‘game changers’ that will transform mobility.