If you’re ever in London riding on the Tube, and you look up at the adverts, you’ll see technology start-ups for almost every conceivable market: Working-from-home communication software; laundry and housekeeping services; takeaway and delivery; even call-out hair drying services.
Often these amount to software whizz-kids wanting to carve a lucrative niche for themselves by becoming middlemen and making other people’s lives easier – an admirable aim. And the tide is unlikely to stem, as technology becomes more and more limitless.
But when these ideas collide with transport, the extra obligations to use more-than-roadworthy vehicles and rigorously-checked staff, and generally to comply with a set of laws they probably didn’t even think about when they were designing the software, can put an end to the dream.
Just look at Uber. A brilliant idea, but it was its lack of corporate responsibility – including using ‘self-employed’ drivers, and failures to take seriously DBS checks and reports of criminal offences, failures that most coach and bus operators would never countenance – that led to Transport for London not renewing its licence.
However, those ‘disruptive’ start-ups that get it right are coming to shape the industry, and traditional operators can’t afford to ignore them.
Take Zeelo – by the time the geniuses behind it had left university, they’d already sold their taxi booking start-up to Addison Lee. And Zeelo received over £1m in funding last year, so it’s not going anywhere.
But Zeelo isn’t a coach operator. It needs your beautiful, meticulously-maintained coaches, and your well-trained, fully-checked drivers, to serve modern customers who are looking for transport in modern ways.
Technology isn’t the enemy. In today’s world, it can be one of your best friends.
