Thought leaders hail Liverpool’s vision on future transport

1 March 2019

Liverpool is leading discussions about how automated vehicles and other future technological advancements in transport can have a collective benefit for communities and free up space devoted to the rise of the motor vehicle.

A panel of experts in transport, planning, and urban and cultural geography presented their visions for the future at Ideas: 2170 – The Future Is (Nearly Now): Transport in the 21st Century to a packed audience at the Liverpool campus of Western Sydney University.

Liverpool City Council is investigating options for a driverless, electric, trackless tram guided by GPS to connect Western Sydney Airport with its CBD.

“No one else is doing this in Sydney,” said Tim Williams, Australasia Cities Leader at Arup Australia and Adjunct Professor at WSU. “There’s not a proper conversation going on about what autonomous vehicles means for public transport, for social inclusion, for the environment.

“We may need to reinvent it, but mass transit remains at the heart of any functioning city.

“So it’s really important Liverpool wants to have a conversation. Your trackless tram strikes me as a great idea. It has all the smarts in it and it remembers there’s a core collective out there.”

Moderator Liverpool City Council CEO Kiersten Fishburn with panellists Andrew Chapman, Clare Gardiner-Barnes, Professor Donald McNeill and Tim Williams.

Transport for NSW Deputy Secretary, Freight, Strategy and Planning, Clare Gardiner-Barnes, said Western Sydney was a focus area for using emerging technologies to provide new public transport services – as long as the community is given its say on how those are implemented.

“We want to engage the community and understand what its vision is for the future of transport as we improve services and build new infrastructure,” she said.

Ms Gardiner-Barnes said a number of automated vehicle trials were currently under way in Sydney and regional NSW and building trust in the safety of the technology was important.

Andrew Chapman, Director of Operations at drone company AUAV, said that the technology to deliver goods and people using drones was here, but regulation and societal acceptance was lagging.

Mr Chapman said manned aviation was “in the dark ages”.

“At the moment with manned aviation you have [a kilometre] between aircraft to make sure they don’t hit each other. Drones can be a metre between each other and they do a better job of avoiding each other.”

Donald McNeill, Professor of Urban and Cultural Geography at WSU said: “Although there has been a lot of talk about autonomous vehicles, it is interesting to see the growth of micromobility, especially the issue of e-scooters and dockless bikes, and whether we can get a workable model that suits the public and doesn't cause public nuisance.”

Ideas 2170 is a series of talks held by Liverpool City Council and Western Sydney University.