Professor Nick Binedell, who was the Dean of Gibs Business School, said the world was marching to three Cs that were going to drive the world in the next decade. The first C is change. We are continuously changing. If you’re thinking that you’re finished changing, then you are finished. We have to keep changing and we have to stay ahead.People who don’t change will become irrelevant. That includes companies and countries.People who change along with change will survive, but people who drive change will lead.Change is a challenge and a way of life that you have to embrace. The second C is complexity. We’re working in the most complex world there has ever been. We have an overload of data. We have the 4th industrial revolution that is giving us blocks of data. But if data is not transformed into information, if we don’t have data scientists that can get something out of this data, we’re lost.The third C is competition. Back in the day when you had an edge over your competition, it took six months to a year to catch up. If you’re doing something right today, by tonight people will be looking at doing it quicker, faster, and cheaper.China is currently working on a plan to make, at half the price, whatever it is that you’re producing.If one wants to talk about the economy and transport, it’s like arguing about a lift in a 50-storey building. If there is not a lift in a 50-storey building you won’t be able to run your building beyond the eighth f loor. If transport doesn’t work, you’re building won’t work.If you look at Gauteng, you’ll see that it’s the smallest province in the country – 18 176 sq km ‘big’, or 1.42% of the country’s entire landmass.Yet we have the highest population figure – 25.3%, or 15.5 million people, and we generate 37% of the country’s GDP.Plus, there is a yearly in-migration of about 200 000 people into Gauteng from the other eight provinces.Every day, 547 people move to Gauteng.Need for efficient public transportWe are the powerhouse of the country but that means increased demand for moving people, goods and services.Our functional transport area is also much wider than the boundaries of Gauteng.If you want our province to work, you need an integrated public transport system.The key requirements of such a system is that land-use planning, transport planning, and economic planning must be co-ordinated.In transport, we don’t operate in a silo. So what are the global issues impacting our transport? Two and a half years ago, Corona was a South American cider that you drank with a piece of lemon in it. Then we discovered that it had another meaning. Covid hit us and the rest is history. Migration to citiesCurrently there are four things impacting globalisation, and population densification is number-one. We have a prediction that about 65% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. That means big cities. Lagos, for example, has a population that grows by two million people every three years. If that continues, Lagos will have 60 million people by the end of this century. It’s something that we’ve never heard of before and something that we have never tried to manage. Because of globalisation, we have things like pollution and congestion and, as a result, we have to move towards smart cities.Secondly, we have global warming because of greenhouse gases. There is no doubt that earth moving is the biggest issue we have to solve within the next 20 to 30 years. It is not an option any more, it is a requirement and the transport industry is responsible for 16% of the CO2 emissions in the world. But in cities we are responsible for up to 40% of these harmful emissions.Thirdly, there is the fourth industrial revolution as it pertains to disruptions. Disruptive technology is an incredible phenomenon. Existing systems get attacked and it happens quickly. So how do we handle this disruptive technology?Then there is the workforce challenge. The World Economic Forum says that by 2025, 52% of the world’s jobs will be done by robots. In South Africa we already have 11.5 million unemployed people trying to get back into the workforce whose jobs are probably already done by robots.But I would like talk about alternative power sources.If we think Covid was a problem, or that economic collapse is a problem, the big guy waiting to come and bite us is climate change. The countries of the world have made a commitment to reduce carbon. We have to reduce carbon. The secretary general of the International Transport Forum, Dr Young Tae Kim, has said that, as a sector, we emit around a quarter of global energy-related CO2emissions.That’s why transport policies are critical to climate action.By 2050, passenger demand is projected to be more than twice 2015 levels, while freight demand is set to grow by a factor of 2.6 in the same period.Based on the current trajectory, transport emissions are projected to grow by 16% between 2015 and 2050, reaching nearly 8.7 giga tonnes.Top tasks for the transport industryAccording to Kim there are several top tasks for policy-makers in the transport industry:•Align policies to revive the economy, mitigate climate change and strengthen equity.•Focus on accessibility, create seamless trips and increase opportunities.•Target sector with strategies geared to emissions reduction potential. Urban mobility has the highest potential. Road freight and aviation are the hardest to decarbonise.•Support innovation to accelerate technological breakthroughs needed to decarbonise transport.•Break down silos and boost collaboration between independent sectors such as transport, energy, tourism and trade.The UN’s COP 26 Climate Change Conference in November 2021 also emphasised that transport electrification, coupled with clean energy transition, were critical to decarbonise the transport sector, especially when implemented in combination with other technologies and mobility transitions that would trigger a systematic change in transport and mobility across all modes.COP 26 added that ensuring the resilience of transport systems and supply chains in response to disruptions was a key priority, especially in the wake of Covid-19.To page 35
