Co-mobility
In recent years, public transport has been disrupted with the arrival of private players such as Uber, Lime, Heetch, … The list is long and they are all offering different ways to move around the city. The plethora of choices make it more complicated for citizens to select the best solution for their needs. Our goal is to make it easier for people to plan their daily travel, accounting for multiple means of transport.
Public transport cannot always be relied upon to reach your destination. Many people live and work in remote areas that are not always on public transport networks. Such people rely on their personal cars, increasing the number of cars on roads near economic activity pools. We need to offer those people greener alternatives to get to work and back.
To combat pollution, one of the strongest responses is electrification. The adoption of electrification is growing fast in cities, but the infrastructure remains a significant barrier. It is still difficult to find charging points (public or private), even if the number is on the increase. Consequently, users are subject to range anxiety. Another obstacle to electrification is the charge time which is still seen as a disadvantage by consumers, although this may present opportunities to propose parallel activities and convert the wasted time into pleasant, productive and meaningful experiences.
We need to switch our focus from a car-centric approach to a more citizen-centric approach. Public spaces need to be reinvented to allow citizens to evolve. If we allocate more space to other transport means we can initiate a virtuous circle, inciting people to use these alternatives. How can we share the public space more evenly, allowing all means of transport to share a proportionate piece of the available space?
Furthermore, most people that use their car for their daily commute are alone in the vehicle, taking up valuable space and causing more pollution relatively than other means of transport. Whereas solutions such as car sharing / car pooling / shuttle services have been around for some time, the technologies allowing us to reach the critical mass are now available.
Finally, commuting is mostly seen as a waste of time. We are missing an opportunity to entertain people, to connect them and to transform their daily commute into a more valuable experience.
