ITF report highlights how allocating curb space to shared mobility services could reduce traffic congestion over time
By Allison Wylie, Transportation & Mobility Policy
This week, the International Transport Forum is holding its annual Summit in Leipzig, Germany. In an important new report entitled The Shared-Use City: Managing the Curb, the ITF finds that dedicating more space at the curb to shared mobility services, paired with widespread adoption of shared mobility, could reduce overall vehicle miles traveled, increase average traffic speeds, and alleviate traffic congestion.
As cities work to transition their urban cores to a more efficient and sustainable future, the reimagining of how curb space is designed, allocated, and managed is essential. Today, much of this space is used for parked cars that, on average, sit idle 95% of the time. Rather than view curbs as “static, inflexible installations,” the ITF urges cities to rethink their curbs as “dynamic, highly flexible, self-solving puzzles” and outlines the potential benefits of embracing this shift.
Building on previous ITF work looking at the potential impacts from shared mobility services in Lisbon, the report focuses on the city’s high activity area of António Augusto Aguiar and models two typical weekday scenarios — “street-release” and “curb-release” — across three levels of shared mobility adoption — 10%, 20% and 50%. In the first — street-release — the report models the current state of pick-up and drop-off activity in many busy corridors with on-street parking. In this scenario, passengers are either delivered to an open parking spot at the curb or exit the vehicle in general traffic.
In the second scenario — curb-release — pick-up/drop-off zones are bays carved out of existing on-street parking and passengers are delivered to the zone closest to their destination. If the zone is occupied, the vehicle waits for the next available curb space within that zone.
The predicted effects are significant and highlight the critical importance of allocating space at the curb to shared mobility services. When pick-up/drop-off zones are added, and 50% of travel is ride services, vehicle kilometers traveled decrease by up to 25%. What’s more, delays decrease across all vehicles while average traffic speeds rise. These effects are due to a combination of fewer personal car trips and pick-up/drop-off activity occurring outside of travel lanes.
The report’s findings are promising, and we’re excited to continue our efforts to partner with cities to encourage shared mobility adoption, rethink curb space, and prioritize the most efficient uses of our limited urban space. We’re joining forces with a number of cities from Washington, DC to Cincinnati to stand up curb pilots focused on curb reallocation and management strategies, and we recently partnered with the non-profit SharedStreets to build a replicable model for public-private data sharing and collaboration.
As demand for curb space increases — with the rise of freight delivery, shared mobility services, and eventually autonomous vehicles — we share cities’ goals of rethinking curbs as flexible space and making it safer, quicker, and easier for people to get around without having to use their own car. We know the road from a ‘parking city’ to a ‘pick-up and drop-off city’ won’t be an easy one. But we’re excited to see that organizations like the ITF are similarly optimistic about the potential benefits of reimagining the curb.
