Helping transport professionals fast track their success
pro·fes·sion·al /prəˈfɛʃ(ə)n(ə)l/
noun: a person competent or skilled in a particular activity.
You are a professional if you are a member of a vocation or occupation that has specialised education, knowledge, skills or experience, usually with tertiary qualifications and industry experience.
Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.
~ Confucius
Skilled transport professionals are in high demand and short supply … you need to write your own future career script.
To keep up with the rapid change in the workplace you need to take control of your career choices – by knowing yourself, being aware of new developments and making changes.
At work we need to actively take on new projects, learn about new technology and look for innovative solutions to the challenges we face.
We need to be much more active in managing our careers.
We get caught up in the urgent tasks, even the unimportant ones. But we need to make time for the important, but not necessarily urgent, task of managing our own careers.
“The strongest force propelling human progress has been the swift advance and wide diffusion of technology.” — The Economist
There are many exciting new technologies that will continue to transform the world and improve human welfare. Here are eleven of them.
see article by Chris Dixon on Medium
Transport challenges are complex and dynamic, and usually don’t have agreed solutions.
To solve transport challenges or problems, you need to involve a range of key stakeholders who have a keen interest, often with disparate views on what to do. Key stakeholders have a significant interest in the problem or can have a major influence on the approach taken to address the challenges.
As professionals, we are charged with solving problems and usually have our own preferred solution to most transport challenges – but beware of the trap of ‘problem-solution’ thinking.
This results from jumping to the solution immediately a problem is raised, and then unfortunately, vigorously defending this solution, and not leaving open the opportunity to consider other viable options.
Is the emerging autonomous vehicle technology suitable for freight vehicles in Australia?
A demonstration convoy involving six truck manufacturers drove across Europe in April 2016, sponsored by the Netherlands transport agency.
These trucks used autonomous driving technologies to communicate wirelessly and follow in close succession. Semi-autonomous refers to the need for a driver at least in the first truck.
Large public transport projects require patronage demand estimates for planning and investment purposes. While patronage forecasting has been in use for over 50 years, providing the basis for determining the best option to a transport problem and guide investment decisions, they are more often than not, wrong!
Forecasts involve large data collection and analysis exercises using sophisticated strategic transport models to produce forecasts and estimates. Understanding and making judgements on critical assumptions in these models is complex and there are only a very limited number of experienced public transport forecasting professionals.
Our cities are slowing down. Traffic speeds have continued to slow in metropolitan cities over the past 10 years.
This affects mobility increases fuel use and vehicle emissions and makes road based public transport slower and more expensive to operate.
Professionals are facing significant challenges in the provision of mobility and access – a major challenge is insufficient funding for needed transport infrastructure and services.
Yes, we can make better use of the existing infrastructure, by reallocating road space and providing priority to higher value use like freight and public transport. And we can increase throughput by the use of intelligent transport systems technology, such as providing priority at traffic signals, or managing traffic flows by variable speed limits and ramp metering.
Therefore it is important to stop for a while and think about what success means for us.
What is success? the dictionary definitions include:
There are no right or wrong answers, because it depends on your perspective and context.
In the point-to-point transport sector, ride sharing services like UberX, GoCar and GoCatch have disrupted the industry. And government policy has been struggling to keep up, in the context of a highly regulated taxi industry and their very vocal complaints. The disruption is not over yet!
What could this mean for the future of public transport?
Bus network design involves difficult choices, and trade-offs between competing objectives, within funding constraints.
At one end of the spectrum, investment in public bus services aims to achieve the strategic community outcome of moving people in an efficient manner. I refer to this as ROI or return on investment, using the commercial definition.