Every volcanic ash cloud has a silver lining...

I’ve spent the last two days on a train travelling back from Sweden to London. The volcanic eruption in Iceland left me and my two colleagues stranded on Friday night, and since then we have been making slow, but solid progress home. This is the sort of crisis that brings Dickens to mind: ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times’ (all the more appropriate because of the links being made between the last Icelandic volcano and the French Revolution) . The worst of times clearly point to struggle to get on trains and ferries, the sleeping in airports and not being at home with our loved ones. The commercial losses also have serious implications. KPMG estimates that it will cost the aviation industry £200m. It’s a disaster for airlines, tour operators and for Iceland too especially if the disruption continues. And then there is the knock-on effect for imports, exports and all that lost business time. Ironically we can’t get to our Indian session on sustainable mobilitynext week now either! But the experience has been good too. Not only did we manage to get on the trains we needed, especially a hotly contested Eurostar out of Brussels, we have also seen some stunning parts of Northern Europe that you never see going from airport to airport. I have been on a train that goes on a ferry from Denmark to Germany. We met new friends and the people I talked to were impressed by the calm, ease and workability of the train, so perhaps it is something that they will do again. It has also brought out our ingenuity and ability to collaborate. People come together in these sorts of crises and they innovate – our colleagues at the workshop used Facebook to hire some students to drive them home. And while the airlines have suffered, a number of other businesses have gained – the ferries, coaches and Eurostar have probably had their best weekend ever. And our iPhones and wireless connections have meant that we were always up on what was happening. It’s hard to see beyond the frustration and commercial risk what something like this presents. But it also gives us a glimpse of a different sort of world, elements of which are already described in our Tourism 2023 scenarios. A world where we connect more virtually, through tele-presencing and other new conferencing technologies, and are ingenious about how we solve problems. This is the sort of thinking that we need to get to a sustainable future. Could this week’s events be a catalyst for the sort of creative disruption that we need? In the coming days as we continue to be grounded – people will continue to test out lower carbon travel options like trains and buses. They will use teleconferencing more, and they will innovate to find more new ways of doing things. So after all the pain of adjusting, we could find an opportunity for localism, information and communications technology, and overland travel to take us in positive direction towards that sustainable future.