It was questions around another rail project that first brought Hensher to the notice of transportation big-wigs and the ITLS itself into existence, after Hensher was asked to do some of the heavy thinking on a Sydney-Melbourne very fast train project in the late 1980s – a project idea that has since become a perennial election blue sky goal that is quickly binned as the winning party takes office.
(Obviously, Hensher has researched deeply and repeatedly on the subject of what he jokingly calls ‘low flying aircraft’, and he himself would love to see that three-hour Sydney-Melbourne train trip happen, “But it just doesn’t stack up on any economic or financial basis.”)
When that train research project got underway in what was then the Graduate School of Business at the university, it developed its own momentum with, no doubt, a fair amount of its forward energy delivered by Hensher himself. The ITLS prospered locally, then internationally, developing strategic partnerships with other business schools in the UK, India, China and South Africa. Today, much of the software and processes used by people and organizations doing this kind of work was developed at the ITLS.
The organization is also hugely influential for its work in demand forecasting and what are called choice experiments that can identify why people make the choices they do. Recent choice experiments have suggested strongly that people will choose to own and use electric cars.
For all the benefits of electric cars, the fact they will ultimately cost half as much to manufacture and 25 percent less to run, could take some of the shine off public transport. Surveys have shown that people prefer cars for the obvious reasons around comfort and convenience. If electric cars add an economic advantage to that list (just owning a car in Sydney currently costs around $10,000 a year), then walking to a railway station on a hot day to catch a crowded train becomes an ordeal cheaply avoided.
As for driverless vehicles, which will arrive sooner or later, consider this scenario: an office worker would drive to work except there’s nowhere to park. A self-driving car could take them to work, take itself home for the day, then come back in the evening to pick up our office worker and take them home. One office worker. Four daily car trips helping to create a new generation of monster peak hours (already Sydney drivers spend more than 30 percent of their travel time stuck in traffic).