The Triple Transition and AI-Enhanced Creativity in the EU Transport and Mobility Sector

Transport and mobility form the backbone of the European single market, and the sector is now being reshaped simultaneously by digitalisation, decarbonisation and mounting social pressure, a convergence increasingly described as a triple transition. Each of these shifts is well documented in isolation, but far less is known about how they interact within a single industrial ecosystem, or about the role artificial intelligence plays across all three at once. This paper asks how AI, understood not as a consumer tool but as critical, publicly accountable infrastructure, can enhance collective creative capacity in the European transport and mobility sector. Drawing on desk research across EU policy instruments, agency reports, statistics and sectoral literature at EU level, it maps the structure and dynamics of the sector, analyses each transition dimension in turn, and examines the governance architecture that frames them. The analysis finds that the three transitions are tightly coupled but governed in institutional silos; that the sector’s most acute constraint is not technological but human, with severe workforce and skills shortages compounded by poor working conditions and low attractiveness; and that AI’s contribution is greatest where it is treated as shared infrastructure rather than as an added technological layer. The paper contributes a benchmarking framework of four indicators linking sectoral transition challenges to measurable learning outcomes, intended to inform curriculum design for advanced digital skills in transport and mobility, and to support education and skills policy more broadly.