Mobility system egoisms prevent innovative mobility concepts

A plea for future-oriented solutions instead of just “business as usual”!

More inter-modality (use of different means of transport within one transport process) and multi-modality (use of different means of transport within a certain period of time) have been called for repeatedly for years in connection with more efficient transport systems. There has certainly been progress:

Park & Ride spaces at S-Bahn stations in the outskirts of larger cities are now widespread.

Rental bicycles and electric scooters are available in many cities, and the latter in particular have sometimes become a problem in some places because the "parking space" required and the undisciplined behavior of individual users lead to obstructions for pedestrians.

In addition to large parking garages, at least some airports now have good rail connections.

More competition than cooperation

Despite these developments, it can still be observed that the various transport systems primarily compete with each other rather than cooperate. If some protagonists then add an almost religious ideology, this culminates in everyone wanting to reach any place using their favorite means of transport. This is precisely what results in a great deal of inefficiency in mobility as a whole.

Basically, all means of transport compete with each other as soon as several mobility systems are available in the same place or in the same region. The competition relates to

• scarce resources, such as drive energy,
• space for the respective system-specific infrastructure,
• "the right" to produce environmental pollution such as CO2, NOx, etc., noise, vibrations, etc. in return for mobility services.

And finally, the transport systems also compete for the customer who wants to use a mobility service!

The competition between the systems manifests itself, partly historically, in the organizations and structures of transport ministries, authorities and federal or state-owned organizations that are operationally involved in the provision of mobility services. A look at the organizational charts of these institutions reveals departments such as railways, road traffic, federal highways, aviation, waterways & shipping everywhere, sometimes grouped together depending on the size of the authority. The subordinate units, such as the Federal Railway Authority, Federal Highway Administration, Federal Aviation Authority, Waterways and Shipping Authority, etc. are also always geared towards a transport system. Nowhere are there structures that are geared towards the different mobility requirements of mobility users.

The current situation in Germany and many European regions is as follows:

• Cyclists are demanding wide cycle paths on every street and 30 km/h zones for drivers everywhere.
• Supporters of public transport want new subway, tram and bus lines, as well as as many bus lanes as possible, and are also often pushing for every single stop to offer the most comfortable waiting areas possible at all times of day and night and all year round, in order to make public transport attractive in this respect too. Complete accessibility is also often demanded in this context.
• Drivers want to get everywhere in their own cars and park as cheaply as possible or even for free.
• Advocates of the rail system want fast and inexpensive rail connections everywhere, completely regardless of who ultimately pays the actual costs.
• Some protagonists of rail transport even want to ban flights within certain distances as far as possible, without taking into account that some mobility requirements also have time constraints that cannot be met without air traffic.

Such "transport system egoisms" almost always ends in lazy compromises in the context of political decisions. They neither lead to a better mobility offer, nor do they achieve the actual goals of mobility policy (resource efficiency, climate protection, noise protection, etc.). These discussions are intensified by debates about the ecological footprint of various transport systems that are not very rational but very emotional. In addition, people tend to limit themselves to what is known and familiar. Innovative transport concepts cannot develop on the basis of such discussions; every new approach is nipped in the bud by the ideology of what is supposedly known and proven. Against the background of supposed climate friendliness or even harmfulness, further state subsidies for the personally preferred transport system are often demanded in order to promote higher taxes or levies for other systems.

A different perspective

A completely different organizational approach would therefore be to first focus on efficient and convenient mobility offers and solutions and to consider the question of the means of transport later. Basically, one would first differentiate between passenger and freight mobility. One and the same transport system and even a specific means of transport can offer both, both at different times and simultaneously. A further subdivision of mobility requirements can be made depending on distance and lead time:

• local mobility,
• regional mobility,
• trans-regional (cross-border, intercontinental) mobility.

As a rule, local and regional mobility requirements must be met much more spontaneously, i.e. with a shorter lead time. Shopping in the supermarket can become necessary within a few minutes, whereas for most people a trip between continents is planned weeks or months, or at least days, in advance. In geographical border regions, local or regional mobility can also be cross-border, which is why the aforementioned structure should be considered primarily distance-dependent.

If we think about mobility in terms of requirements, then politics must first of all be geared towards accepting mobility as a basic need of many people. In the next step, concrete mobility services must be made available for both people and goods in a safe and reliable manner, as well as economically and ecologically efficient. If there is a high demand for mobility services, it may well be desirable for different offers to exist. Over time, competition leads to innovations with greater benefits for customers as well as more efficient structures that require fewer resources. However, the fundamental approval of competition does not mean that every conceivable mobility requirement must always be met by all possible transport systems.

Doing the math is helpful!

In the context of local and regional mobility in urban areas, a strong limiting factor is the total area and space available. Often there is simply not enough room for all transport systems to be able to offer their respective transport services sensibly and efficiently. If space is a scarce commodity, then good holistic mobility concepts must analyze what mobility services, measured in passenger kilometers (PKM) and ton kilometers (TKM), can be provided in a certain area. In concrete terms, for example, we would have to come to the point where we do not implement bus lanes in inner cities for ideological reasons, but rather check in advance, with an open mind, whether enough people use the bus to justify the area used exclusively for the bus, which is then no longer available to other road users. If a bus lane only leads to the streets of residential areas being congested in addition to the main roads because drivers look for alternatives, it helps no one. Instead of a dedicated bus lane, for example, it might make much more sense to counteract the inefficiency of private car use by only allowing vehicles to drive on certain lanes in heavily congested regions at certain times if several people are being transported in the same vehicle; this is already widespread in the USA with so-called carpool or HOV (highly occupied vehicle) lanes.

Efficiency considerations must also be carried out in advance for new bike paths. Is the area used by bike paths in proportion to the transport performance currently achieved and to be achieved by bicycles in the future? Do the topography of the area and the demographic structures of the population lead us to expect that bike paths will be used accordingly? The increasing popularity of e-bikes may encourage cycling in hilly terrain, but the area required by the cycle path must still be justified by the transport performance.

The myth of environmentally friendly public transport

Buses and trains in their current form of use are nowhere near as environmentally friendly as is widely believed and as advocates of public transport like to propagate. This is because, especially outside of rush hour, far too few people are transported in "containers" that are far too large and because these very heavy means of transport require an unnecessarily high number of energy-intensive acceleration processes to transport passengers to their destination. Depending on their size, regular buses have an empty weight of between 15 and 19 tons, while trams can easily reach 30 to 60 tons and modern subway trains weigh more than 180 tons. Even if all the seats in such a subway are occupied, this does not even correspond to 25 percent of capacity. If half of the seats in such subways are occupied, more than 1.6 tons of train weight per passenger still have to be moved and braked to 0 km/h after every few hundred meters and then accelerated again to 80 km/h. Apart from three to five hours of rush hour on weekdays, most public transport in many regions operates at less than 20% capacity for most of their time. Detailed analyses of tram lines also show that 22 intermediate stops are made on a route of just under 19 km, meaning 23 acceleration processes are carried out for unnecessarily large total masses. Bus lines can make 14 stops for a route of 5 km. All of this is highly inefficient from an energy perspective. These physical facts are also completely independent of the fact that public transport is subsidized with billions of tax revenue. In addition to physical and therefore always ecological inefficiency, there is economic inefficiency as well.

Mobility is expensive

Ultimately, there is both an economic and an ecological price behind every transport and mobility service:

• What are the costs for one passenger kilometer (PKM) in euros and cents (for freight: ton kilometer, TKM)?
• How much CO2 is emitted when the calculation is complete and holistic, i.e. when all infrastructure emissions are correctly taken into account?
• How much disturbing or even harmful noise is caused?
• Depending on the transport system, how much area is needed to realize a PKM or TKM transport service?
• What other resources are used and to what extent?

All of this can be calculated or measured. In order to be able to systematically compare different mobility alternatives, it is crucial that these calculations are carried out taking the respective overall system into account. Simply ignoring complex and/or resource-intensive components leads to distorted results. In the economic calculation, it is also important who actually pays the costs in their entirety.

Especially in connection with the “Germany ticket” (a flat rate nationwide ticket for all local and regional public transport), a sense of entitlement has arisen in some social groups, which can certainly be viewed critically. Flat rate offers for mobility have never led to a reduction in mobility requirements in the past. The opposite is the case: expectations are increasing, people are on the move more because "they have paid for it". It is no longer of interest that a significant part of the costs are not financed by the user of the mobility service, but by third parties (1).

The transport and mobility policy goals that have been intended to be achieved with the billions in subsidies for decades - fewer cars, less private transport - are still being missed by a long way year after year (2).

More of the same not a future concept

If individual mobility systems are subsidized with billions, this leads to a distortion of competition, which also slows down innovative developments. Thinking mobility differently, strengthening inter-modality and multi-modality, also means radically and openly questioning existing transport concepts and trying out innovative mobility concepts and promoting them, even if we must give up well-established habits and familiar forms of mobility. The basic objective must be to offer safe mobility whenever it is in demand, through ecologically and economically efficient systems that meet the respective requirements of the individual.

Expanding demonstrably inefficient and highly deficit-making systems and "feeding" them with even more subsidies swallows up billions but does not lead to more efficient mobility and definitely does not help to reduce CO2 emissions in the mobility ?sector.

Public transport and motorized individual transport merge: the ultimate form of inter-modality

With technologies already available today, in the near future it may no longer be buses and trains as we know them today, but public transport and MIT (motorized individual transport) could largely merge into autonomous vehicles that individuals use when they need them and that are otherwise used by others. This scenario would be the ultimate form of inter-modality. However, Germany or Europe are currently not the pioneers when it comes to implementing, systematically testing and trialing such innovative mobility concepts. This is happening in the USA and currently especially in China, where autonomous taxis have already transported millions of passengers in various cities, initially with "safety drivers" on board (level 3), but recently increasingly without them in defined environments (level 4), (3). Baidu, for example, plans to offer autonomous driving in 65 Chinese cities by 2025.

Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet and thus a "sister company" of Google, already offers its services in San Francisco and Los Angeles in California, as well as in Phoenix, Arizona, and Austin, Texas. Initial tests are underway in several other cities (4). Of course, not everything has always gone smoothly, and the corresponding technologies cannot always be used in all conceivable scenarios and environments right from the start. But only when such experiments are undertaken, one has the chance to learn and improve the technology. The number of trips carried out by Waymo has now risen to more than 150,000 weekly, totaling more than 1,000,000 kilometers per week (5); from May to August 2024 alone, the number of trips doubled (6).

Of course, German car manufacturers are also involved in various projects, some of them in China, in activities related to autonomous driving. But according to the ADAC (German Automobile Association), autonomous vehicles are not expected in Germany until 2040 (7). In the German media, autonomous driving abroad is reported on with a great deal of skepticism, and individual accidents and setbacks sometimes receive much more media attention than the impressive successes.

Thinking about mobility differently can sometimes also mean:

Sometimes you just have to do it!

References

1. Radermacher, K. Public transport funding in Germany: a bottomless pit. [Online] 22. 03 2024. [Zitat vom: 5. 11 24.] https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/public-transport-funding-germany-bottomless-pit-klaus-radermacher-mscue

2. ADAC. Zulassungsrekord: Mehr als 49 Millionen Pkw in Deutschland. [Online] 23. 10 2024. [Zitat vom: 5. 11 24.] https://www.adac.de/news/pkw-bestand-deutschland/ .

3. Table.Media . Autonomes Fahren in China: Von Strategien bis Tech-Unternehmen. [Online] 13. 06 2024. [Zitat vom: 5. 11 24.] https://table.media/china/analyse/autonomes-fahren-in-china-von-strategien-bis-tech-unternehmen/ .

4. manager-magazin. Robotaxi-Firma Waymo jetzt ohne Warteliste. [Online] 26. 06 2024. [Zitat vom: 5. 11 24.] https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/waymo-robotaxi-firma-jetzt-ohne-warteliste-in-san-francisco-a-059d63c3-14c1-4280-b5c0-7d53e7490cfe .

5. Autohaus.de , TECVIA -. Waymo: Robotaxis machen 150.000 Fahrten pro Woche. [Online] 30. 10 2024. [Zitat vom: 5. 11 24.] https://www.autohaus.de/nachrichten/autohandel/waymo-robotaxis-machen-150-000-fahrten-pro-woche-3570260 .

6. manager-magazin. Waymo-Robotaxis machen 100.000 Fahrten pro Woche. [Online] 21. 08 2024. [Zitat vom: 5. 11 24.] https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/waymo-robotaxifirma-knackt-marke-von-100-000-fahrten-pro-woche-a-3b9e29e2-bcc3-4e1c-acd9-bdec5972da9c .

7. ADAC. Autonomes Fahren: So fahren wir in Zukunft. [Online] 03. 05 2024. [Zitat vom: 5. 11 24.] https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/ausstattung-technik-zubehoer/autonomes-fahren/technik-vernetzung/aktuelle-technik/ .

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