Global Report : Transformative Technologies in Transportation

Transport is quickly evolving, adapting, shaping, and being shaped by global megatrends, promoting energy efficiency and environmental quality. The transportation system enables access to essential services and job opportunities and facilitates the production, trade, and distribution of goods. The transportation infrastructure and services that utilize it are vital to economic prosperity and social wellbeing, and sustainable and smart mobility is an essential ingredient to achieve poverty reduction and shared prosperity. Historically, rapid expansion of the transportation network has been associated with economic growth and social development; however, it is now widely recognized that infrastructure expansion alone is not sufficient to address contemporary transportation and mobility problems. Equally important is the need to utilize the existing system more efficiently and enable a wide array of mobility solutions and innovative approaches that meet increasingly diverse needs in varying environments. Given increasing levels of congestion, road crash, local air pollution, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, it is imperative to find a smarter path for future development. To many policy makers and practitioners, technological innovations are the key enablers of such transformation