Mobility Matters Daily #85 - Car addiction, transport governance, and street lights
As well as some data on cycling in Europe that you won't quite believe
Hello friends,
While walking around a lake in Milton Keynes on Sunday, I had the pleasure of seeing one the national e-scooter pilots in the wild. Whilst a Sunday morning trip around a popular lake is hardly a representative sample set, the diversity of users was great to see. Young adults, grandparents, mums, dads, and kids (on their own scooters), and even a family of Indian descent. And all using them responsibly as well. A complete contrast to the common narrative. I trust that your weekend - extended or not - was suitably relaxing.
Breaking car addiction needs more than an app
For some years now, moving to providing mobility as a service has been sold (only by some, I hasten to add) as a way of tackling car addiction. The hypothesis is that if you break the ownership model, you reduce reliance on the car. This is based partly on evidence that shows car ownership significantly affects use of private cars and public transport. But what does the research show?
It shows that economic incentives rarely have the desired long term effect of breaking car ownership. Car ownership can have a significant impact on perceptions of public transport. When looking at free-floating car clubs, up to 37% of users in London said it impacted on their car ownership, with the majority putting off car ownership. But in Germany, a significant proportion of users still plan to own a car anyway. There are early signs that when you shift to a service model something happens, but the logic behind removing car ownership from the equation only seems to work on a certain percentage of people.
Governance can only be fixed when creating it from scratch
This excellent analysis in The Economist of the recent incident where a plane flying over Belarus was diverted and a journalist arrested touches on a subject that weirdly fascinates me: transport governance. Notably, quite how hard it is to change governance structures once put in place. In this case, nation states having exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above their countries, all because Britain didn’t want American airlines competing on routes to and from its colonies in the 1940s.
Governance structures can impact on transport’s ability to meet climate change objectives, achieving growth and inclusion goals, and actually being able to do good transport planning (among other things). But unless designed with adaptability in mind from the outset, their permanence impacts their ability to rise to new challenges. We tend to know what doesn’t work and how to fix it (usually summarised as “give me more power and I can fix it”), but not how to design with change in mind. Our transport policies should also consider what type of authority places wish to have in the future.
The single most important transport technology created since the wheel is the humble street light
Over the weekend, I managed to read the excellent book Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep by David Randall. Focussed on how sleep affects the modern world, and particularly how this relates to light and dark, it contains a side of history we rarely hear of. For instance, it was once common for families to wake up in the middle of the night, and have a meal together.
One of the most important things that changed this was the invention of the street light. Without it, our 24 hour world would not exist today. Think of the impact they have. They can help to reduce crime levels and improve feelings of safety, that we know already. Artificial light affects the migratory patterns of birds. Activities once confined to daylight hours can now be done at all hours as our towns and cities have become well-lit. And that is a huge impact for something most of us walk by every day without noticing (unless they are not working).
Stat of the Day
What a contrast between cities and cycling as a way of getting around. Copenhagen and Amsterdam lead the way in Europe, with only a handful of further capital cities getting above 10% modal share. But hang on, what is Budapest doing there?
This shows the value of checking your data source. And by checking my sources, you can find out why Budapest is so interesting.
Data Sources: Download (Google Sheets) | ECF Cycling Data Map