Mobility Matters Daily #84 - Swapping batteries, the evidence paradox, and cities for ageing
Just because its a holiday, doesn't mean i stop...
It’s the Summer Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK, and that means two things. Fully-booked trains, and motorways and main roads to and from holiday resorts being congested all weekend. But the sunny weather has meant my normal cycle to pick up groceries has been far more pleasurable than usual. This time last year (when we were still in the first lockdown), cycling was up 283%, and I can’t say it was at that level again as I cycled to the farm shop on Saturday. The world of transport is rarely static.
Swapping batteries may overcome range anxiety for users of electric mobility, but the costs of doing so are unclear
Range anxiety is a long-established problem facing the adoption of electric mobility globally. As transport planners, we often see the solution as more charging stations - whether it be for cars, bikes, scooters, or a mixture of the 3. But battery-swapping (it is what the name suggests) is another solution, with companies like Gogoro pioneering solutions that allow users to swap batteries themselves instead of waiting for an engineer to come out. When even the likes of Renault are considering it, you know its serious.
From a customer and operational stand point, this makes sense. By swapping out a dead battery to be charged either at a charging station or back at a depot, it keeps the vehicle on the road for more time, and earning money. It can work very well in distributed operational systems such as scooters and bikes. But despite early research showing the construction costs of charging through charging points may actually be lower than battery swapping, there has been no other public research into this. A useful one to plug as local authorites seek to expand their electric mobility options in the future.
You can’t look for the evidence for change in a system built to maintain itself
This weekend, Adam Lent of New Local (a UK think-tank that advocates for community-based public services) reminded me of an evidence paradox that applies equally to transport planning. In simple terms, you are asked to prove something works within a context where proving the evidence for the status quo is easier. So new approaches need to win out by either measuring according to the current policy making procedures, or in terms of story telling.
I’ve seen this in transport policy making. Where cycling schemes have to prove their benefits in an assessment system built for valuing the benefits of road infrastructure. Or pedestrians are ‘too hard’ to measure so we don’t count them, but counting cars is easy. Part of the reason why our policy making is so path dependent is because we don’t use qualitative data and stories to seek out other ways of delivering. We often just count, and counting rarely changes anything.
Making cities fit for aging is like making a city - it takes a long time, but you have to make a start somewhere
In the German city of Arnsberg, since 1995 they have been building for a future we all know is coming - where more people will be older. It all started with a simple question - how do you want to age? Then they built a city department around meeting those needs and avoiding those fears. The results have been amazing.
An ageing population is a global phenomenon, with life expectancy at 65 years old forecast to rise by 2050 across every country in the world. Transport planning knows what it wants to avoid when it comes to ageing. But we rarely considers how people wish to age, and what that means for our cities. The evidence shows that this is having an active social life, learning, and giving back to the community. Sounds like a good case for public spaces to me.
Stats of the Day
The UK Department for Transport features again today (I will start using other data sources, I swear), having just released results from Wave 5 of the National Travel Attitudes Study. This one focussed on attitudes to walking and cycling in the pandemic. People want safer roads, off-road cycle tracks, and well maintained roads. Need I say more?
Data source: National Travel Attitudes Study: Wave 5 (UK Department for Transport)