Transport is a critical part of our everyday lives. Trucks, trains, cars, buses, boats and planes keep people and goods moving, whether it’s getting to work, having parcels delivered or shopping in the supermarket.

Our reliance on transport is hard to change. A recent demonstration of this was Transport Scotland’s decision to stop subsiding peak time train fares on ScotRail.

It was hoped the one-year trial, which made rush hour train tickets cheaper and cost the Scottish Government £40 million, would encourage more people to swap car journeys for rail travel, to help tackle climate change.

But the trial had only “limited” success, Transport Scotland said. Train passenger numbers grew by up to 6.8%, but for the policy to be self-financing, a 10% increase in passenger numbers was needed.

As a logistics expert and joint director of TransiT, a new national hub focused on rapidly decarbonising transport in the UK, my takeaways from this are two-fold.

Firstly, no government can afford to decarbonise transport. The sector is too vast and the costs too big. About $180 billion a year is currently being invested in decarbonising transport globally, and we know that number will just keep growing.

Secondly, our transport habits and the fragmented nature of transport - from private cars to railways, ferries, airlines and everything in between - are incredibly complex.

We know that transport accounts for about 30% of carbon emissions in the UK and globally. But where and how do we start with cutting those emissions?

Huge progress is already being made in areas including electric vehicles and alternative fuels. But much more is needed, and time is running out.

Our TransiT research hub has been set up to address these big challenges. Jointly led by Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, we are a collaboration of eight universities and 67 partners, including transport operators, regulators, vehicle makers, technology companies and energy suppliers.

Our mission is to identify the lowest-cost, least risky and most energy-efficient way to decarbonise transport, by developing a digital twinning approach.

Digital twins are digital replicas of the physical world. They collect data from the real world in real time and tell us what we should be doing better.

For example, where to put chargers for electric vehicles? And how many chargers do we need? The answers to these questions need to consider the range of electric vehicles, the types of journeys undertaken, and the timing of any charging stops. Digital twins can use real-world, real-time data to ensure that the new system is designed well, and that we are operate it efficiently.

Digital twins can test many scenarios in minutes or hours, instead of years, so help to address the urgency, complexity and cost of decarbonising transport.

Modelling our future transport system with digital twins also removes uncertainty about what works and what doesn’t.

And this in turn unlocks private sector investment in decarbonised transport systems and technologies.

TransiT’s researchers have been working in this field for many years. But it’s the beginning of a new journey for Scotland and the UK, with potentially global benefits on our transition to net zero.

Professor Phil Greening is a logistics expert at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and a joint director of TransiT.

Agenda is a column for outside contributors. Contact: agenda@theherald.co.uk