Assessing future travel demand: a need to account for non‐transport technologies?

Purpose – Travel is usually not valued in and of itself, but for the activities it allows people to partake in. Therefore, if change occurs in either the activities people perform, or in the means they use to perform them, the demand for travel is likely to change accordingly. Technologies have the potential to accommodate the activities people need or want to perform and how they perform them. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to increase the understanding of the complex relations between technologies developing outside the transport domain, social practices and travel, and the uncertainties that can result from these linkages. As such it draws attention to the interconnectivity of transport with other domains (e.g. healthcare, retail, leisure). Design/methodology/approach – The relations between non‐transport technologies, social practices and travel are largely unintended and/or unanticipated. This study therefore utilised notions developed elsewhere of the mechanisms through which unintended consequences materialize. With these notions in mind, some selected examples of past, present and possible future technologies expose the possible indirect influences they can have on travel demand, thereby developing the conceptual understanding of these linkages. Findings – If policies are being developed to limit, change, or reduce people's travel then non‐transport technologies may thwart those policy ambitions in serious ways or be realised in unexpected and surprising forms. Research limitations/implications – There appears precious little (quantitative) evidence of data that captures the relations between technologies, social practices and travel. Originality/value – This study is one of the first to examine the indirect impacts of technological developments occurring outside the transport domain on travel demand.