Secretary’s Message: Transport is a Technology Business

In 2016 over 600 of the brightest minds across technology and transport, including renowned thought-leaders Steve Wozniak and Chris Riddell, took part in the Future Transport Technology Summit.

This pioneering event challenged all in attendance to explore the boundless potential of technology and prioritise areas for Transport innovation – whilst keeping the customer at the centre of everything we do.

And from this, a rapid, positive and game-changing transformation began.

We removed red tape and made our processes faster and more flexible, establishing new ways for external experts to share data, insights and innovative ideas. 

We actively sought out and engaged with a growing, vibrant innovation ecosystem through challenges as well as the procurement of trials and proof-of-concepts. 

Across the Transport Cluster, with Transport for NSW being the lead transport agency in the State of New South Wales (NSW), we have fostered collaborative and agile partnerships with industry to accelerate technology-driven transport solutions.

All this then led to the creation of the Future Transport Technology Roadmap and the launch of:

  • The Smart Innovation Centre – a research and development springboard for government, industry and the research sector to explore and trial emerging transport and road technology.
  • Future Transport Digital Accelerator – to facilitate direct collaboration between the public and private sectors and to challenge and incubate a vibrant NSW startup ecosystem.
  • Transport for NSW Research Hub – to challenge the research, academic and data science community to develop insights and predictive models around future transport scenarios.
  • Open Data Hub and Developer Portal – a pioneering platform that gives the public free and open access to over 3000 privacy-assured data sets and secure APIs. Used by local and international technology companies and startups from TripView to Google, it has enabled innovation across consumer applications, transport planning and research and development with more than 2.2 billion API hits since inception. 

We welcome robust and diverse engagement with industry and community. Looking forward, we are committed to increasing the pace of technology-charged innovation to deliver exceptional mobility for our customers well into the future.

 

Rodd Staples

Secretary, Transport for NSW

NSW Future Mobility