Sustainable Transportation Ecosystem: Addressing sustainability from an integrated systems perspective

The transportation sector is currently at a juncture characterized by both great opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, the introduction of new technologies, new players and changing customer behaviours provide the sector with the potential to transform as a system, for new business models to develop, and for the different modes to provide more concrete responses to the challenge of environmental sustainability and carbon emissions reductions in the sector. On the other hand, factors such as the current depressed economic climate, scarcity of resources and system inertia inhibit the industry’s ability to respond efficiently to these opportunities, delaying the introduction of technologies that would enable the transportation sector to reach its environmental sustainability and carbon emissions reductions targets and its evolution to an innovative system.