Intelligent mobility

Smart innovation is leading the transition of urban mobility, but is it intelligent enough to improve social and economic conditions?

Bike-transit is!

There is a lot of hype around smart cities and particularly mobility these days. However the technical-engineering leadership of post-war mobility development should be a warning sign not to allow technologists to lead mobility innovations without broader social debate.

Intelligent mobility must go beyond the mobility field and consider other uses than mobility of the same urban or rural space. That is why simply changing the driver of a vehicle from human to machine falls short of expectations.

What is more important in autonomous driving is the environmental impact to the physical vicinity of that vehicle. Will it be safer to send our kids to the streets, will it be bareable or even nice to sit in a cafe next to these vehicles passing by?

Mobility was considered for a long time a burden to society that connects places of activities. Unfortunately, in many areas of the world it is still priority to reduce the time “wasted” during transport and speed up the traffic flow at the cost of activities beside mobility. However, more and more research has confirmed that prioritising speeds essentially relocates the activities we are looking for, creating a spiral of hipermobility.

Land-use Transport feedback cycle - Wegener & Fuerst, 2004.

Mobility is, and can be positive for society, if it facilitates diversity and random encounters. Mobility is essentially the space where humans can and must interact without prior engagement unlike any other activity that has some sort of social filtering (e.g. jobs, education, recreation etc).

In this regard, intelligent mobility must prioratise modalities that not only reduce the impact to local uses, like housing, retail, recreation but also enhances interactions for people’s mental health and facilitates some activity for physical health.

While little (or none) of these aspects are covered in the discussion around autonomous vehicles, there is a country where such intelligent mobility already exists nationwide: The Netherlands.

If it works in the Netherlands city, why not any other agglomeration?

Over 30% of all trips are made by bicycle and long-distance travel is increasingly covered by bike-train, the integrated modes of the two.

Bike-Train: Better access and faster speeds than car — Characterizing the bicycle–train mode by Kager et al (2016) adapted from Mayer and Miller (2013)

The combination of the two modes provides similar or even better speed and accessibility levels as (autonomous) vehicles, yet increases life expectency (as opposed to sedentary lifestyles), enhances possible interactions (as opposed to forced interaction in a small vehicle), improves local economy by facilitating people watching and among many others, strengthens self-reliance as opposed to machine-reliance.

While autonomous feeder service to transit hubs is an improvement over current bus systems, they will never achieve the flexibility and adaptability of an (electric) scooter or (electric) bike. Moreover the energy efficiency of the bicycle is still unmatched.

The most exciting part of it all is that first and last mile transport changes the mass mode, too: cyclists tend to do the extra mile and cycle to main stations instead of lower-level stations, saving them an exchange. (Eg. taking a bus stop further which also serves a train, instead of nearest stop.) Needing less local feeder buses and growing demand for high-level, more efficient services (trains, BRT, etc).

In the Netherlands having a (rental) bicycle at the away end of the trip has revolutionised long-distance travel, with an annual national growth of 5% over 10 years now. Today there are over 14,500 rental bikes at over 300 locations provided by the rail operator, NS.

Observing our local Dutch examples, we at Mobilock believe that every country in the future shall aspire to raise the happiest kids in the world who can safely explore more and more of their environments as the Dutch kids do. We also believe mobility is not only for the afluent ones, but young, old and less-abled should also have the comfort and independence to explore, reach jobs, education or socialise. Utility cycling ticks all the above boxes and when longer distances needed, high level transit becomes available because more people can access it comfortably. Because cycling is as convenient as walking and yet it provides a 4 fold increase in speed, in practice cycling catchment areas are at least 10 times larger than walking ones, potentially leading to 10-fold transit patronage and turnover.

Same time, multi-fold catchment area. (Kager and Harms, 2017)

In order to create such convenient transport and consequently more interactive, liveable cities we need more dedicated space for cycling and more integration to public transit.

Want to hear more?

Will electric scooters replace bicycles?

Free-floating bike sharing is dead, long live dockless bike sharing!

A bike-share model for the future!

Originally published at https://urbanmobilitydaily.com/intelligent-mobility/