Summary
Could ticketless travel and satellite connectivity be coming to our rail network?
Greg Foot examines the rise of future wonder products.
He's joined by experts, entrepreneurs and industry innovators to discuss the trends we're seeing today and where they may lead us tomorrow, before a leading futurist offers their predictions on what life might be like within five, ten and fifty years.
In this episode Greg hears how renationalisation, digital signalling, satellite connections, ticketless technology and battery power might transform our trains in the future.
With him is the futurist Tom Cheesewright and guests including:
- Dickon Ross, Editor of Rail Magazine - Maggie Simpson OBE, Director General at the Rail Freight Group - Mike Butler, Director of Rail & Innovation at Clarus Networks
Produced by Jon Douglas. Dough is a BBC Audio North Production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Hello, I've just nipped in before your BBC podcast starts to tell you all about |
| 0:09.4 | You're Dead to Me. We're the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Also from the BBC |
| 0:13.9 | and presented by me, Greg Jenner. I should have told you that at the beginning. Sorry. |
| 0:17.9 | Anyway, like many other BBC podcasts, such as Desert Island Discs, Evil Genius, or In Our Time, your dead to me is available first on BBC Sounds, |
| 0:26.3 | a whole month earlier than anywhere else, in fact. So if you can't wait another day to hear |
| 0:31.2 | the very latest in history and loads of other good stuff, then listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.5 | You're about to listen to the latest episode |
| 0:38.3 | of Doe. Episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays wherever you get your podcasts, but you can |
| 0:43.3 | listen to the latest episode first on BBC Sounds a week earlier than anywhere else. Make |
| 0:48.3 | sure you subscribe to get new episodes of Doe as soon as they become available and listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:56.7 | Hello, I'm Greg Foote and welcome to Doe, the show that explores future wonder products |
| 1:01.4 | that might rise to success and redefine our lives. Each episode, I sit down with entrepreneurs |
| 1:06.7 | and experts to discuss whether businesses of today may be tomorrow. This time we're looking at |
| 1:12.1 | the future of trains, asking whether satellite connectivity could be the key to making rail |
| 1:17.2 | journeys safer and more cost effective, whether ticketless travel could become a thing, and if |
| 1:22.6 | trains of the future will be driverless. If you're new to Doe, hello, each episode I am joined by one of our resident futurists, |
| 1:31.8 | and after we've done some future scoping with our guests, I challenge our futurist |
| 1:36.1 | to give their predictions on what the business of tomorrow may look like in 5, 10 and 50 years |
| 1:41.4 | time. |
| 1:42.1 | Joining me today, right on track as ever, he's the train of thought leader. Kind of works. It's futurist Tom Cheeswright. Hello, Tom. Hello, Greg. I am chuff, chuff, chuffed to be here. Bravo, sir, bravo. So you spent some time last year looking into the future of trains for a project that you did with the train operator LNER. |
| 2:04.4 | 2,000 people were surveyed about what they wanted on board. |
... |
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