Content area
Full text
Transportation (2012) 39:873876 DOI 10.1007/s11116-012-9427-4
Martin E. H. Lee-Gosselin Ron N. Buliung
Published online: 22 June 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2012
It would be difcult to overstate the signicance of the worldwide increase in access to information and communications technologies (ICTs) over the past 5 or 6 years. One-third of the global population is now on-line, and global penetration of mobile-cellular telephony had reached 5.9 billion subscriptions in 2011 (ITU 2011). This compares to a world population, over the age of 9, of 5.7 billion in the same year. Between 2006 and 2011, there was a doubling in the number of mobile-cellular broadband subscriptions, a type of higher-order service that supports mobile and rapid sharing of larger volumes of data (ITU 2011). With regard to growth in information infrastructure, Europe leads the world in terms of the supply of bandwidth, with an average per user of nearly 90,000 bits per second. The Americas (including Canada and the US) follow, yet clear global disparities persist. In Africa, for example, the average bandwidth per user is around 2,000 bits per second (ITU 2011).
The implications for transport systems of such a diffusion of ICTs are arguably profound. Initially, the role of ICTs was viewed primarily through the lens of improved traveller information. However, as was observed a decade ago by a US National Academies Advisory Board (STECRPAB 2002), the combination of ICTs with other fast-evolving technologies, such as control and propulsion systems, and alternative fuels, provided the conditions for a veritable technological revolution in transportation. The expected outcome was a transformation, not just in the supply of cleaner and more fuel-efcient motorised vehicles, but also in the human activity patterns that shape travel demand, resulting in major impacts on energy consumption, the environment and public healthalthough not necessarily always in a desirable direction. While it is not our purpose here to evaluate the extent to which these outcomes are occurring, we are persuaded
M. E. H. Lee-Gosselin (&)SAD-CRAD, Pavillon Flix-Antoine-Savard, Universit Laval, 2325 rue des Bibliothques, Local 1612, Qubec, QC G1V 0A6, Canadae-mail: [email protected]
R. N. Buliung
Department of Geography, University of Toronto Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canadae-mail: [email protected]
The role of ICTs in the transformation and the experience of travel
123