Smart Mobility while waiting for the Smart City
Urban mobility — more specifically defined as the unique transportation fabric and modalities for moving people, goods and waste around in any particular city — constitutes a significant part of daily urban life. It follows from here that there can be no Smart City without Smart Mobility. The challenge is that smart urban mobility is a complex systemic matter and that innovations — both technological and non-technological — are progressing rapidly and rather unpredictably.
Urban thinkers and technologists — amongst them many tech companies, some cities and a few governments — have long championed the (utopian) gospel of truly ‘Smart’ Cities. While waiting for the ultimate Smart City vision to materialise, a more pragmatic view has emerged, emphasising the iterative steps and processes toward the ever-smarter city.
This article examines the Smart Mobility state of play and what cities can do while in the process of transitioning themselves towards ever smarter solutions.
What is Smart urban mobility?
The term Smart Mobility usually refers to, and is primarily rooted in, recent technological innovations and notably digitalisation, where sensors monitor the main constituents of a transport system — i.e. vehicles, infrastructures and (contentiously) people themselves. Digital solutions already in place in many cities include real-time traffic flow, parking and travel/route guidance systems, responsive street lighting and smart waste collection, a.o.
However, two additional attributes qualify for a more up-to-date understanding of Smart Mobility:
Firstly, green solutions in mobility-related fields such as Electrical Vehicles (EVs), energy, urban space, cargo delivery, waste management, circular economy, and increased emphasis on active mobility (walking and cycling).
Secondly, new Smart Urban Mobility solutions also tend to be based on significantly changed if not radically new business models. This may involve anything from smarter ticketing systems, car and bike sharing and ride-hailing programmes, and re-purposing of public space and buildings (e.g. train stations).
Hence, Smart Mobility includes a variety of solutions ranging from shared and/or on-demand mobility of people and goods, to integrated solutions such as intelligent traffic management systems (ITS), Mobility as a Service (MaaS), informed and/or multimodal trip planning, and smart delivery.
The traditional answer to mobility limitations has often been simply to increase the supply capacity of roads, public transport services, parking lots, etc. This however tends to result in inefficient usage of land and asset resources, congestion problems and air pollution — classical pain points of the post-industrial city.
By contrast, new and smarter mobility solutions are designed around individual needs and demand, and they are characterised by better utilisation of assets and resources, e.g. through sharing. Several city cases have demonstrated substantial gains in transport energy consumption, emissions, and mileage through planned shifts in demand and modal choice, and by better integration of the entire Smart Mobility eco-system including new business and operating models.
It follows from here that Smart Mobility solutions do not necessarily rely on modern technology. Increased focus on active mobility such as walking and cycling is perhaps the clearest example where the physical outlay of streets and public space is known to be key driver. It is not rocket science (in the technical sense of the word at least)!
On the same note, newer but already very common (disruptive) technologies such as sensors, high-speed internet and smartphones have proven key to filling the gap between individual travel needs and the provision of mass transit. This is already true for people transport and soon for freight logistics alike.
From a “future” technology point of view, mobility is expected to become ever more connected and automated. Vehicles are becoming autonomous, synchronizable into fleets for mass transit, using V2X (Vehicle-to-everything) communication and artificial intelligence (AI). Electrification is generally accepted as the “winning” energy form for transport in urban environments (electro-mobility), in addition to “pedal power” — cycling, and walking (active mobility). Land-based means of transportation will increasingly be supplemented by water and air-borne vehicles.
How and where to be smart “around” urban mobility per se?
Preparing for the near future, there are several activities and considerations that cities should take into account today already.
Concerning the built environment and physical outlay/grid, liveability and sustainability are already at the core of urban planning in many cities. Features such as (e.g. also low emissions) zone planning and Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) are standards in the toolbox of modern urban planners, as are public transport priority lanes and roadside curving prepared for semi-autonomous cars. These are standard tools for the urban planner professional — but actually still not at all standard implements in the majority of cities. Why wait?
Intelligent traffic control systems and intelligent street lightings are examples of areas where Smart City technology is already relatively mature and where many cities already have systems partly in place. Particularly the business case for smart street lightning systems may have drastically improved against the background of the European energy crisis and the fundamental need for energy supply transition.
Electrification of transportation, charging infrastructure roll-out and V2X integration of the EVs continue to be key driving elements in achieving sustainable urban mobility. In the low-carbon energy near future, power systems are increasingly challenged by variable power generation and increased demand. “Electronomous” vehicles, electric bikes and scooters for the last mile, drone delivery of goods, and shared mobility as a service may likewise influence the electrical power system. At the distribution level, massive deployment (uptake) of electric vehicles (EV) may generate local voltage excursions and grid congestion, but if EV charging (and de-charging) is being controlled, the EVs can potentially help mitigate the self-incurred adverse effects.
Infrastructure sensors embedded in the built environment are used for intelligent traffic management systems, parking, and environmental control. In combination with sensors and GPS data from cars and sensors in people’s smartphones etc. this can be used for personalised mobility services to benefit the individual citizen — as well as anything from real-time predictions to long-term modelling of transport demand and supply, amongst many other things. This is an area where cities are advised to start piloting and doing their own learning experiments where feasible. No reason (or point, really) for cities to sit back waiting for full-fledged off-the-shelf systems to hit the markets.
Coordination amongst mobility providers will increase the availability of services, smoothen multi-modal transitions, and integrate ticketing payments and information. A fast-growing number of cities and regions have their own travel planning platforms but more can be done to explore the integration of demand coordination with the mobility supply and other-mobility related systems.
Digitalisation, understanding people, and a solid business case are key
Smarter mobility measures clearly do carry impacts on congestion, air pollution, road safety, noise, intermodality and costs. However not always in a net positive let alone the resource-efficient way. For example, while round-trip car-sharing users may reduce their individual vehicle mileage, the same solution may cause other transport users to shift away from public transportation. Another example is ride-hailing services which are not necessarily net positive if they increase weekly mileage and thereby contribute to congestion.
Better utilisation of the vast amounts of data already available from sensors can also support decision-making for smarter mobility and urban planning. This is not least relevant for supporting the transformation of urban public space and associated transport veins into more liveable and sustainable modes.
Even with scarce local data sets and incomplete mobility models, cities should rarely hesitate to plan for more active mobility such as walking and cycling. There is a positive relationship between active mobility on the one side, and urban density and land-use mix on the other. Walkability and bike-ability are associated with access conditions, environmental qualities and infrastructure for pedestrians and bicycles. Research also shows that urban cyclists value safety higher than time savings whereas route choice preferences interestingly differ from country to country. These are all important insights for spatial planning. Finally, health-related motives are becoming ever more important arguments for active mobility; a Smart City is also a healthy city.
Nudging is another non-technological tool in the Smart Mobility toolbox. Nudges aim at redirecting transport users’ behaviour through slight interventions, for example making more eco-efficient choices such as using public transport or micro-mobility instead of private cars or selecting slower but more energy-efficient routes. Cities can often apply nudges as a cheap and sometimes very effective tool next to “heavy” traditional policy instruments such as infrastructure investments, pricing and regulation.
Finally and to wrap up, picking the right business case for the right Smart Mobility problem is critically important. Developing solutions for sustainable urban mobility often requires connecting knowledge and technologies from a diverse and large set of actors. And the way in which the implicated actors effectively combine their business and solution cases ultimately marks the difference between success or failure, or no development at all.
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Make sure to also take a look at our other mobility-related Medium articles, and always feel free to reach out to us for any inquiry.
