5. Public transport

Getting people out of cars and into public transport is seen as one of the ways of improving travel journeys - less pollution, less noise, less congestion. But the car is a very convenient mode of transport.

In a large European wide survey people said that they would consider mixing up their journey between car and public transport if:

• they could transfer more easily between bus, train, car, tram
• they had better online information about schedules
• there were a convenient online payment system
• there was a 'one-ticket-for-everything' facility

Therefore ICT systems have a large role to play in encouraging more use of public transport.

Online scheduling systems need to be in place to inform travellers of what is available at that moment - you could imagine having a smart phone application that uses GPS to pinpoint your location then shows a real-time map of all the buses in the vicinity along with their route details. No more squinting at complicated paper schedules at bus stops.

One-ticket-for-everything systems. There are systems already in place in some cities that offer a zone travel ticket for metro trains and buses, for example the London Oyster card. But in future there may be ICT systems in place that support travelling over extended distances with a single ticket. Perhaps even across Europe with one comprehensive ticket that allows you to travel by train, ship or air, whichever makes sense at that point in your journey.

Convenient payment systems. Imagine you want to go from a small town in the south of England to a small town in the north of Scotland. You decide to use a bus journey to the nearest train station, that takes you to an airport, at the other end you catch a train from the airport to the town and finally take a bus to your destination.

Paying for all this online can be very complicated at the moment - you would need to go on the bus web site and pay by credit card, then use the train site and airline site. It is a very long winded, tedious process.

In future it is envisaged that these systems will be connected so that it is possible to pay for an entire journey in one step. This is one of the aims of the Europe Transport 2050 plan