AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 74

autonomous scooter: sadly, these won’t, in 2030, be around in enough
numbers really to change the business of reaching an informal event
or returning home from one.
So how, outside London, will people hit by poor public transport
get to informal events? Part of the answer may lie with the private
sector providing new, ingenious, IT-based transport solutions.
In London, Citymapper’s Smart Ride runs a fleet of eight-seater
Mercedes Viano buses on fixed routes. Meanwhile, Uber has come to
like the Night Tube in London, because most of Uber’s business relates
to the last mile of a journey home, and the Night Tube provides plenty
of passengers who could use a car for exactly that last mile.
Wherever it emerges, privately organised ride-sharing will no
doubt continue to meet with dissent, around events as elsewhere.
But at the London Film Festival, London Fashion Week and the
South by Southwest Conference and Festivals (SXSW), Austin, Texas,
themselves put on minivans to ferry people from place to place –
and with little opposition. In the future, cities, towns and boroughs
will probably build on that kind of approach. To underpin events,
local authorities will use IT to mesh, for the event-goer, the best
combinations of public, private and festival transport.
Like transport generally, the transport of people around informal
events will be a political hot potato. At the same time, the transport
of event equipment is likely to get trickier. The technologies of live
entertainment and sport will be more extensive, but also more
expensive in future. Everyone around informal events will have to
think through the logistical challenges here.
Despite all this, transport to and from events will not just be
a challenge, but also an opportunity. Events raise demand for
transport, giving it the opportunity to develop and so improve
overall audience satisfaction. Even the scrappy festival car park,
already an arena for drum improvisations by audiences in the US,
could be made a site for fun, rather than for navigational confusion.
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