On the Threshold to the Next Generation of Mobility

Urban mobility is one of the toughest challenges that cities face as existing mobility systems are close to break down. In all regions in the world strategic projects are under development to address these issues, which can be summarized under the title Smart Mobility Management or Next Generation Mobility. Some highlights promising dramatic improvements are illustrated by strategic projects evaluating new technologies:

• Autonomous Driving in Dubai: The city of Dubai intends to make 25% of its trips driverless by 2030. The shift to autonomous transport is expected to reduce transportation costs by 44 percent, saving $6 billion a year in accidents, lost productivity, and pollution. Dubai expects to reduce traffic accidents by 12 percent, pollution by 12 percent, and time lost to travel by 396 million hours per year. Dubai is offering what Sheikh Mohammed calls "the world's biggest" request for proposals from research and development centers as part of the Autonomous Transportation Challenge, effectively making Dubai the world's "largest R&D lab for driverless transportation." (autoblog, 2016)
• IoT – Connected Cars in Dohar: Cars that “talk” to one another and exchange information about traffic accidents, congestion and other details will join Qatar’s roads as part of a pilot project next year. The testing will hopefully lead to a commercial rollout of connected technology in Qatar vehicles by 2019. The first phase of the QatarV2X (V2X) will comprise of 30 to 50 equipped vehicles and 20 to 30 roadside units. (Dohar News, 2016)
• E-Mobility Dresden: Electric buses are an eco-friendly alternative to diesel. With several project partners, Fraunhofer researchers have developed a concept to swiftly recharge buses while they operate routes. System testing in Dresden has been underway since November last year. (Fraunhofer, 2015)
• Mobility as a Service – SMILE, Vienna: The idea of smile was to offer a wide range of different transportation providers with all functions: Information – Booking – Payment – Usage – Billing. A standardized interface (smile Connector) enables all mobility partners to link their technical systems via specific adaptors to provide all their data, including the ticketing. With the same approach all routing services were connected to the mobility platform:VAO (Verkehrsauskunft ?sterreich), AIT-Routerspecifically for e-cars and e-bikes and the toursprung router for bike routes. (Neue Urbane Mobilit?t Wien GmbH, 2016)

The list of research projects, pilot projects, and first implementations of advanced mobility could be continued infinitely. Experts are expecting a significant share of new technologies in the mobility mix within the next 10 to 15 years.  This time period is a typical planning time horizon of strategic transport mobility plans.

A complete different and new mobility is on our doorstep. We can still treat the symptoms after each step of change or we can actively shape the future.

Benchmarking Urban Mobility – A Change of Philosophy

Introduced in the early 1990s Transport Mobility Management  is a shift in attitude from the earlier predict and provide approach in transport planning, where future transport demand was predicted and the necessary infrastructure was provided, to the management of the demand of transport.

“Mobility management is primarily a demand-oriented approach to transport that involves new partnerships and a set of tools to support and encourage change of attitude and behavior towards sustainable modes of transport. These tools are usually based on information and organization, coordination and require promotion. Mobility management addresses specific target groups and has developed a range of instruments, best known are the mobility centre and the mobility plan. Mobility management is a constant process of development”. (Source: European Projects, MOSAIC and MOMENTUM)

The crucial issues are that hard infrastructure measures are supported by soft measures and that repeated planning in reasonable intervals is replaced by a continuous dynamic planning process.

If we accept that Transport Mobility Management is a change in management of mobility, we need to adapt not only our planning concepts but also our strategic management tools to the new challenges. Benchmarking is one of the strategic management tools, which is widely spread to guide cities in the planning process.

The process of benchmarking is about comparing an organization’s performance or process on a number of measures in relation to a carefully selected benchmark (e.g. a successful peer organization), providing information on the areas and scale of potential improvement, and indentifying good practices for implementing changes that effect improvement. The main objectives of benchmarking are to learn from top performers and adopt best practices for effective performance improvement.

Don’t lose the chain of Cause and Effect

Benchmarking has a present and future focus and encompasses the key elements of performance measurement. The key themes include performance measurement, comparison, identification of best practices and adopting these good practices and processes for improvement. Actually looking on national and international benchmarks, mode split is one of the most important key performance indicators under consideration.

Mode Split involves separating (splitting) trips from each origin zone to each destination zone into distinct travel modes (e.g., walking, bicycle, driving, train , bus).  The formulation of strategic goals using mode split, i.e. 5% more share of cycling, is often used in the formulation of measurements. But is this a useful number to guide to the future?

Benchmarking is a strategic management tool and therefore the key performance indicators have to be strictly derived from the vision and objectives.  Let us have a look on the strategic goals of modern urban mobility.

• Quality of Live: reducing traffic and congestion, reducing trip time, empowering people with choice and control, improving public safety, secure easy access and accounting
• Environment: reducing GHG emissions, identify and exploit potentials of green spaces, improving quality of air, reduce noise
• Economic Capacity: increase cities’ competitive advantage,  decrease life cycle costs of infrastructure,  ensure support function of local and global economy

Using Mode Split in Benchmarking we can see a shift between objectives and key performance indicator, which can be illustrated by the following examples.

• E-Mobility: Comparing motorized individual transport using combustion engine with e-cars we have a significant difference in CO2-emissions. First one is counting for 150g per km and person and last is counting from 100 g per km and person using the current energy mix to 7g per km and person with renewable energy. A shift from combustion engines to electric drive has a significant impact on the environment, but cannot be seen in the mode shift number.
• Mobility Services: Our perception of mobility is changing from the choice of means of transport to collect a mix of modes from start to end point. Mobility is converting to a selection over the value chain. Mode Split is representing this dramatic change insufficient.

A new philosophy of transport planning is forcing a new generation of management and controlling tools.

Strategic Guidance in Urban Mobility Transformation

To utilize the benefits of management tools like benchmarking, we should develop a new generation of key performance indicators to guide our developments to the desired future. The set of measurements should be

• Strongly derived from vision and objectives
• Accept the dynamics in the system
• Enable new potential of technology like big data analysis
• Overarching and holistic; avoid partial considerations
• Controllable regards to effort of measurement
• Taking local conditions (i.e. climate) into account