Richard Branson, who charged Greenbang £100 to travel on his Virgin train from London to Birmingham the other day, take note. This very much applies to you.

And while you have ‘eco-friendly’ signs all over your marketing, with these prices, ambassador, you are really spoiling us. Sorry, I mean, you’re encouraging people to drive instead.

“A new study by Arthur D. Little explains how public transport in the UK and elsewhere is not perceived to be meeting travellers’ needs adequately due to high costs and lack of routes and/or technology support (for entertainment or work applications) on board. Even those people who choose to drive themselves must accept their travel time is lost as far as work or social pursuits are concerned; many are making that choice in the absence of realistic public transport alternatives.

“Apart from these barriers to successful growth, transport providers have faced toughening operating conditions due to rising costs, tightening environmental legislation, growing expectations from the government and society to reduce their carbon footprints and other emissions, disgruntled travellers becoming more vocal and rail travel networks operating at saturation levels at peak times.

“Within and around these challenges our research has investigated that the next five years hold significant business opportunities for companies that can deliver new ways of making personal travel more efficient and public transport more attractive and competitive,” reflects James Catmur, Director of Arthur D. Little’s UK Sustainability and Risk Management Practice.

“In the first part of our ongoing study in sustainable transport, we’ve identified collaborative technology strategies as potentially the fastest route to realizing these opportunities. We are currently looking at how product and service innovations in the transport sector can deliver added value to the traveller while at the same time justifying higher prices or creating completely new revenue streams. In light of current values, trends and challenges, the next step of our research is to identify particularly promising innovations to make transport more sustainable. We expect to release a further report outlining these ideas later this year.”

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