Transport in 2026: My Predictions
Key Takeaways
- Here are my 10 predictions for transport in 2026:
- Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) will continue along their current trajectory.
- Transport will continue to transition to net zero. But too slowly.
- We will not see any step-change improvements in road safety.
- Public transport will go backwards, but we won’t realise it.
- Transport strategies will largely remain a virtue-signalling exercise.
- Infrastructure costs will remain relatively unchanged.
- No great leap in active transport.
- High-speed rail: A tale of three trajectories.
- Road user charging will continue to gain momentum.
- We will continue to spend too much on new and bigger roads.
- Despite these relatively pessimistic forecasts, I am optimistic about the future, as foundational work is underway to improve decision-making.
What Next?
What should we do differently so that my 2027 predictions are far more upbeat?
Introduction
As we close out 2025, it's time for the annual ritual of reflection and forecasting. In this, my last blog of the year, I'm making ten predictions for what 2026 will hold for transport systems and the big strategic challenges we're grappling with.
Fair warning: these predictions lean pessimistic. After years of observing the gap between our transport ambitions and our actual delivery, I've learned to temper expectations. We're excellent at producing glossy strategies promising sustainable, equitable, safe transport systems. We're far less impressive at following through.
That said, realism shouldn't be mistaken for defeatism. Understanding where we're likely headed, including our blind spots and recurring mistakes, is the first step toward charting a better course.
The predictions below cover autonomous vehicles, decarbonisation, road safety, public transport, active transport, high-speed rail, road user charging, infrastructure costs, and more. They're not ranked in any particular order, but together they paint a picture of a sector making incremental progress in some areas while remaining stubbornly stuck in others.
So with that context, let's dive into what I think 2026 has in store for transport.
Prediction 1 - Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) will continue along their current trajectory
The robotaxi rollout shows no signs of slowing. It feels like every week brings another press release announcing expansion into new cities, and I expect this momentum to continue throughout 2026.
Regulation: Missing the bigger picture
My concerns about AV regulation remain unchanged from what I've written previously. We'll continue to be dazzled by the technology and fixate almost exclusively on safety metrics. Yes, there will be some high-profile edge cases, situations a human driver would have navigated easily, that generate headlines and hand-wringing. But the overall trajectory is clear: robotaxis will keep getting safer.
What we won't do is grapple with the harder questions: How do we ensure AVs complement rather than compete with public transport? How do we prevent them from increasing vehicle kilometres travelled and worsening congestion? How do we capture their benefits for the broader transport system? These questions will remain largely unaddressed in 2026.
Freight: Long-haul gains, last-mile stagnation
For logistics, expect continued progress in autonomous trucking for long-haul routes. The economics are simply too compelling, replacing the cost of a driver and the potential of continuous driving on interstate or intercity journeys will drive significant investment and deployment.
Last-mile delivery is a different story. The operational complexities of navigating tight urban streets and dealing with unpredictable humans on sidewalks will keep progress slow in this segment.
Public transport: Institutional inertia wins
Don't expect a breakthrough year for autonomous public transport. We'll see a handful of new operational services launch, but rapid scaling won't materialise. The institutional challenges facing public transport agencies, combined with relatively modest investment compared with robotaxis and an unproven business model, will limit progress.
Moreover, I expect operational challenges from the services that do launch, including safety issues, edge-case failures, and workforce concerns. These will be used to justify further delays and more caution.
Prediction 2 - Transport will continue to transition to net-zero. But too slowly.
The transition to electric vehicles will continue to accelerate in 2026, but the pace will remain uneven and, ultimately, insufficient to meet our climate commitments.
The EV divide
For those who can charge at home, typically suburban homeowners with off-street parking, the EV transition will continue to gain momentum. Costs are falling, range anxiety is diminishing, and the charging infrastructure is improving. This group will increasingly see EVs as the obvious choice.
But for others, apartment dwellers, renters, and those reliant on street parking, the transition will be slower. Public charging infrastructure remains expensive and inconvenient compared to home charging. Until we solve the economics and practicalities of charging for people without driveways, we'll see a two-speed transition.
The fatal flaw: electrification without transformation
The bigger problem is strategic, not technical. As I've written before, we're placing far too much faith in electrification as a silver bullet for decarbonisation.
What we desperately need, but won't see in 2026, is meaningful progress on mode shift. We'll continue to ignore the uncomfortable reality that truly sustainable transport requires changing how we move, not just what powers our vehicles.
Prediction 3 - We will not see any step-change improvements in road safety
Despite the lofty commitments, Vision Zero pledges across dozens of cities and the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030, with its target to halve road traffic deaths, 2026 will be another year in which these promises are honoured more in the breach than in the observance.
The measures we refuse to take
We know what works. Decades of evidence tells us that lower speeds save lives, that consistent enforcement of speed limits and distraction laws prevents crashes, that infrastructure designed to encourage slower speeds, and that protected bike lanes and better pedestrian crossings dramatically reduce deaths among vulnerable road users.
Yet we'll continue to resist implementing these measures at scale. Why? Because they're politically uncomfortable. Slowing down drivers generates backlash. Speed cameras are derided as "revenue-raising."
The result: incremental tinkering
Instead of the systemic changes required, we'll see incremental improvements, a handful of well-designed intersections here, a local 30 km/h zone there, some modest increases in enforcement. A few countries will make meaningful progress. But most jurisdictions will continue the pattern of announcing ambitious targets while avoiding the difficult decisions needed to achieve them.
Prediction 4 - Public transport will go backwards, but we won’t realise it.
2026 marks the beginning of the UN's decade of action for sustainable transport. Will we see significant progress? I don't think so. Some systems, mainly in the US, will become visibly worse. Worryingly, in an increasing number of places, I expect things to look superficially positive while deep structural problems take root, problems that won't become obvious for a few years yet.
The illusion of progress
On the surface, the picture will seem encouraging. Patronage numbers in many cities will improve. Politicians will tout these figures as evidence of success.
But look closer, and the cracks appear. Public transport won't be capturing a larger share of transport budgets. The fundamental prioritisation of private vehicles over public transport will remain unchanged.
The low fare trap
The most concerning trend will be the continued spread of low or free fares. I've written before about why this is problematic, but it bears repeating: this policy is politically irresistible. It's immediately popular with the public and generates impressive headline patronage figures.
And it will prove to be a slow-moving disaster.
Here's what the headline numbers will hide: Lower fares mean less revenue, which means funding must come from somewhere. That somewhere will be deferred maintenance and delayed asset renewals. You can't see this immediately; trains and buses don't stop working the day you skip an overhaul, but the degradation is real and cumulative.
Over time, reliability will worsen. Services will become less frequent as aging fleets require more downtime. Breakdowns will increase. The very reliability that public transport needs will erode, slowly but surely undermining patronage despite the low fares.
2026 will be the year lower fares become more entrenched, and we fail to notice the foundations crumbling beneath us.
Prediction 5 - Transport strategies will largely remain a virtue-signalling exercise.
In 2026, expect a steady stream of glossy transport strategies from cities, regions, and national governments around the world. They'll promise more sustainable, equitable, safer, liveable (pick your preferred aspirational adjective) transport systems. They'll feature compelling graphics, stakeholder quotes, and ambitious visions for transformation.
And most will deliver disappointingly little.
The accountability gap
The fundamental problem isn't a lack of strategic thinking. It's the carefully constructed absence of accountability. These strategies will continue to be heavy on vision and light on specifics, vague about targets and conspicuously lacking the near-term milestones that would allow anyone to measure progress or failure.
When a strategy promises to "increase public transport mode share" without specifying by how much or by when, it's designed to be unfalsifiable. When it commits to "prioritising active transport" without detailing budget allocations or kilometres of protected bike lanes to be built, it's theatre, not policy.
Why this persists
This pattern continues because it serves everyone's short-term interests. Politicians get to announce ambitious plans. Agencies produce impressive documents that tick consultation boxes. Advocacy groups can point to commitments in writing. And when, inevitably, little changes, a new strategy document will be produced.
What's missing is the courage to set specific, measurable, time-bound objectives that would make failure obvious and success verifiable. What percentage reduction in vehicle kilometres travelled by 2030? How much will the transport budget shift from roads to public and active transport?
The result
We'll continue to produce strategies that read well but change little. A few jurisdictions will buck this trend and deliver genuine progress. But they'll remain the exception.
Prediction 6 - Infrastructure costs will remain relatively unchanged
If you live in a jurisdiction where transport infrastructure is eye-wateringly expensive to build, I have bad news: 2026 won't be the year that changes.
The cost divergence we can't ignore
The disparities are staggering. Spain builds metros for a fraction of what similar projects cost in Sydney or New York. Some jurisdictions build transport infrastructure efficiently; others seem incapable of doing so.
There's no shortage of analysis attempting to explain these differences. Yet this analysis hasn't translated into solving it. The structural changes needed to move high-cost jurisdictions toward the efficiency of their low-cost counterparts aren't happening. Not meaningfully, anyway.
Why? Because the changes required are politically and institutionally difficult. Building long-term capacity and capability takes investment and commitment.
Hoping for a breakthrough
Perhaps I've missed something. Perhaps there's a jurisdiction somewhere that's cracked the code, implementing the structural changes needed to transition from expensive to efficient infrastructure delivery. If so, they could create a playbook for others to follow, demonstrating that the barriers aren't insurmountable.
Prediction 7 - No great leap in active transport
Despite overwhelming evidence of the benefits of walking and cycling, 2026 will be another year of underinvestment.
The investment-rhetoric gap
Based on the enthusiastic press releases that accompany the occasional new bike lane, you'd think active transport was receiving unprecedented support. In reality, these announcements typically celebrate token projects that represent a tiny fraction of transport budgets, the kind of investments that make for good photos but don't create the connected networks that would actually change how people move.
Active transport will remain the afterthought, the nice-to-have, the thing we support in principle but somehow never quite prioritise in practice.
The political playbook problem
Part of the challenge is that active transport has become unnecessarily confrontational in many places. The dominant political playbook involves pitched battles over road space reallocation, taking lanes from cars to create protected bike infrastructure. This generates fierce opposition from drivers, business owners concerned about parking, and anyone whose commute might be affected.
Most politicians, understandably, want no part of this fight.
The e-bike opportunity we'll squander
E-bikes could be a game-changer. The evidence is mounting that they could be transformative for getting people out of cars. We should be doubling down.
Instead, we're heading toward a moral panic that will undermine their potential.
The problem is regulatory failure. What are being called "e-bikes" increasingly includes what are essentially electric motorcycles, vehicles capable of high speeds, often modified beyond legal limits, sometimes ridden recklessly on footpaths and shared paths. When these cause deaths and serious injuries to pedestrians and other vulnerable road users, the resulting outrage will be directed at "e-bikes" broadly, rather than at our failure to properly regulate and enforce distinctions between pedal-assist e-bikes and electric motorcycles.
Missing the nuances
In our hyperpolarised discourse around active transport, these crucial nuances will be lost. The careful work of distinguishing between different vehicle types, creating appropriate infrastructure for each, and enforcing sensible regulations will be drowned out by culture-war positioning.
The result
Active transport in 2026 will see marginal gains in most cities, with significant progress in a few exemplars.
Prediction 8 - High Speed Rail: A tale of three trajectories
High-speed rail (HSR) will continue to generate polarised outcomes in 2026, with progress, or lack thereof, falling into three distinct categories based on institutional capability and experience.
The established players: Building momentum
Countries with mature HSR programs and strong delivery capabilities, primarily in the EU and Asia, will continue expanding their networks. These places have solved the technical challenges, developed standardised approaches, and built the institutional knowledge to deliver projects with relative efficiency.
The struggling pioneers: From bad to worse
For countries with low institutional capability that have already committed to HSR projects, 2026 will bring more pain. The UK's HS2 and California High Speed Rail, both poster children for how not to deliver major infrastructure, will continue their struggles with further delays and cost blowouts highly likely.
The optimistic planners: Problems deferred
Canada and Australia will continue planning their first HSR projects in 2026. Any fundamental problems with these projects won't become apparent next year. These issues typically only emerge once projects move from planning to delivery, when optimistic assumptions meet expensive reality.
I've written before about why I think HSR for Australia is a poor use of limited transport funds. But that argument won't gain traction in 2026. The planning phase is when HSR looks most attractive.
Prediction 9 - Road user charging will continue to gain momentum
2025 saw meaningful progress on road user charging (RUC), and that momentum will continue into 2026 as more jurisdictions confront the pressures of declining fuel tax revenue.
The recent wins
The successes of 2025 provide a foundation to build on. New York successfully implemented its congestion charge. New Zealand passed legislation enabling widespread RUC for all vehicles. The UK announced an RUC scheme for electric vehicles starting in 2028. Australia is actively debating its options.
The technology question: Simple or sophisticated?
The technology now exists, although not yet proven, to support highly sophisticated RUC schemes that use differential pricing based on time of day, location, vehicle emissions, congestion levels, and more. Done well, this could be transformative: pricing that reduces peak congestion, charges more for travel in dense urban areas, incentivises off-peak travel, and reflects the true costs different vehicles impose on the system.
But sophisticated schemes might be a leap too far. The alternative is crude simplicity: a flat charge per kilometre driven, regardless of when or where you're driving, often targeted only at EVs.
Prediction 10 - We will continue to spend too much on new and bigger roads.
Despite decades of evidence that building more roads doesn't solve congestion, because of induced demand, 2026 will see continued large investment in road expansion projects.
Why the road building continues
The appeal is obvious and enduring. Road projects are popular with the public, who genuinely believe that one more lane will finally solve congestion. So do most politicians. And so the cycle continues: build roads, traffic increases, congestion returns, calls for more roads, repeat.
Not everywhere, but most places
Some cities and regions will resist this pattern. They'll prioritise sustainable transport investment, hold the line on road expansion, and have the courage to explain to their communities why more roads won't solve their problems. These places will demonstrate what's possible.
But they'll be the exception. Most jurisdictions will continue down the well-worn path of road expansion.
An optimistic note
Reading back through these predictions, I'm struck by how negative they sound. That wasn't entirely intentional, but it reflects an honest assessment of where we are and where we're likely headed in the near term.
Yet despite this sobering outlook, I remain genuinely hopeful about the longer arc of change.
The foundations are being laid
What gives me optimism isn't the promise of sudden transformation, that's not coming. It's the quiet, unglamorous work happening beneath the surface.
I'm increasingly involved in projects that support decision-makers, providing them with better tools and practical frameworks for making smarter choices. This work doesn't generate headlines. It won't produce visible results in the first half of 2026. But it's exactly the kind of foundational work that enables better decisions.
That's what I'm working toward, and that's why I remain optimistic despite the predictions above.
Conclusion
As we look ahead to 2026, it's clear that transport faces a year of incremental progress rather than transformative change. While robotaxis will expand, electric vehicles will gain ground, and road user charging will advance in select jurisdictions, the fundamental challenges: inadequate public transport, stagnant road safety, underinvestment in active transport, and too much spending on roads, will persist.
I recognise these predictions paint a sobering picture. The gap between our transport strategies and what we actually deliver continues to widen.
Yet despite this realism, I remain cautiously optimistic. The foundations for meaningful change are being laid, even if slowly.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on these predictions. Which resonate with you? Where do you think I'm wrong? And most importantly, what can we do differently in 2026 to help move transport more in the right direction?
Have a great end of the year, and here's to a brighter transport future.