Editor's Blog - March 2020
Future mobility - who is calling the shots?
Transport has a community benefit but commercial interests are setting the pace.
Harry Camkin (former Chief Traffic Engineer DMT; Director, Traffic Authority of NSW; Director Road Safety NSW RTA; National President of The Chartered Institute of Transport and of the Australian; president of College of Road Safety) sent in an article he found in The Conversation titled “Billions are pouring into mobility technology – will the transport revolution live up to the hype?”
He was particularly interested in the issue of vested interest in creating future directions for transport.
Some of the text from the article is particularly worth repeating
Over the past decade, almost US$200 billion has been invested globally in mobility technology that promises to improve our ability to get around. More than US$33 billion was invested last year alone. Another measure of interest in this area is the number of unicorns, which has doubled in the past two years.
A unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at US$1 billion or more. In early 2018 there were 22 travel and mobility unicorns. By last month the number had grown to 44.
The top categories in the mobility area are: ride-hailing, with 11 unicorns (25.0%); autonomous vehicles, with ten (22.7%); and micromobility, with three (6.8%). The remaining 20 unicorns are in the travel category (hotels, bookings and so on).
Mobility technology is more than just autonomous vehicles, ride-hailing and e-scooters and e-bikes. It also includes: electrification (electric vehicles, charging/batteries); fleet management and connectivity (connectivity, data management, cybersecurity, parking, fleet management); auto commerce (car sharing); transportation logistics (freight, last-mile delivery); and urban air mobility.
The headings under which further comments were made are:
- Promised solutions, emerging problems
- Three trends are driving investment
- The future of transport isn’t simple
What are we doing about it?
I listened for a short while to a recent webinar from ITS Australia titled “Connected and Automated Vehicles: When, Where, How?”. It repeated some presentations that have been given in the recent past about the regulatory framework for these issues. But I can’t help thinking of the Uber experience where regulation may have to fight the steamroller of business that claims to create jobs.
At the ITE breakfast in Melbourne, Robyn Seymour, Deputy Secretary - Network Planning and Head of Road Safety for Transport for Victoria, spoke about the revolutions like Uber that we have to be ready to address. I asked a question about how good we are at identifying unintended consequences of new technologies.
Where will the first all-electric UK bus town be?
There is no greater example, in my mind, of incremental thinking than our attitude to buses.
I once went to a presentation on the proposed Carlingford to Parramatta light rail project that is anticipated to finish by 2023. I suggested that by 2023 autonomous bus systems in defined corridors would be well developed and ideal for this situation. The presenter who was from marketing, screwed up his face and said, “We don’t want buses”.
I know a senior executive who hates buses. It isn’t that he works in the car industry, it’s that he lives in the inner city and the noise of a diesel bus especially when first moving from a bus stop, is penetrating. The air pollution doesn’t help either.
Equally I went to a meeting held at Sydney University through David Hensher’s Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies that spoke of bus corridors with autonomous vehicles that have some inherent benefits over railed systems. And they look good.
But local areas in the UK will be able to apply for funding to become Britain's first fully electric bus town.
The winning area will receive up to £50 million to help pay for a brand-new fleet of electric buses, reducing emissions and cleaning up the air in their community.
A town with 200 electric buses could save around 7,400 tonnes of CO2 each year, the equivalent to taking 3,700 diesel cars off the road.
Of course, the best way to stop getting an effective policy for buses is to get the more fanatical proponents of other public transport modes to rant against it.
The UK government announced last year that it will launch the UK’s first-ever long-term bus strategy and long-term funding plan, to ensure that buses are prioritised into the future.
Getting rid of private cars is not the whole answer
Quality management has said “If you set a target people will meet the target no matter what the cost to the company”.
An article in the Guardian titled “How London got rid of private cars – and grew more congested than ever” began with the following paragraph
Britain’s biggest city has almost ground to a halt, thanks to the rise of Uber, delivery drivers – and cycle lanes. Can anything be done to end the gridlock and pollution?
I think this is an issue about what you measure and how you interpret the results.
There is no doubt that a city cannot function effectively if there is an over dependence on private car trips where the occupancy of a sizable vehicle is usually one person.
Equally just demonising private car trips can lead to a myopic approach. We have reported in previous newsletters some research that shows that if we have autonomous ride hailing vehicles then people will use a car (not their car) for many more trips.
Encouraging bike riding is a positive direction. Congestion for cars arising from bike lanes may not be a big issue but slowing buses is; so a balance must be struck. The other issue that AITPM member Brian Smith (who is a passionate support of alternative transport to the private car) has raised is that many of the people now riding bikes have come out a of public transport mode. This doesn’t make it wrong but we need to understand the real effects of our implemented strategies.
Unintended or even misunderstood consequences need to be addressed so that we do not have a narrow-minded, one-dimensional focus.
Jaguar Land Rover – avoiding working in isolation to the broader city needs
Car companies were once seen as producing a product to satisfy individual customer needs. Now like many organisations they wish to be seen as having a more empathetic approach to issue of the environment, congestion and town planning.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) have just shown a new concept car - its Project Vector.
I interviewed Dr. Tim Leveton, who is the leader of this project and has specialised in product development at the highest level in his 40 years in the industry. He heads Jaguar Land Rover’s Future Mobility Research Project. This concept vehicle is electric, has side doors like a train carriage and seats that can be arranged to suit various functions because he said:
What we can see is that in the future, it's not only the design of the vehicle, which will help in the way that we can create zero emission vehicles, for example. But how those vehicles integrate into a completely integrated mobility system for assistance. Our aim has got to be to reduce the number of vehicles. And this can only be achieved by sharing vehicles and by getting higher occupancy in those vehicles.
Audi extends ‘green wave’ chances to second German city
I have tried to cover some of the developments in car manufacturing not because I have an interest in driving and testing them, but because they will be integrally involved in the way our cities end up operating.
We have now heard the following report:
Audi increases chances of drivers catching the ‘green wave’ as its smart traffic light information system is introduced in a second German city.
Following a successful implementation of the networking of traffic lights in Ingolstadt, the OEM has chosen Dusseldorf to be the next place for Audi drivers to benefit from the Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) service.
I know Audi well and have seen some good things from their broader work and the ‘green wave’ system is desirable from a range of considerations including the environment. The big issue is not what this might mean for me or other individual drivers but what it means for the management of the road system from a community’s perspective and whether traffic engineers will lose some or all control of the community asset they are meant to manage.
I am sure we can work with car manufacturers and others to get the best from new technology. The first thing we must resolve is what is “the best”. Is it for the person who can afford a car that has the technology, does it bring about an overall benefit, will it add an unfair burden on some road users (such as vehicles trying to enter from a side street)?
Transport Blogs
The Feedspot web site just listed its top 10 transport podcasts and my Overdrive weekly program came in at number 7 amid mostly very serious and technical programs including overseas efforts. Certainly none of the others were aimed at being entertaining.
It should be noted that the podcast is defined as “An informed, humorous and irreverent look at motoring and transport from Australia and overseas. Featuring motoring & transport news, road tests, feature interviews & quirky stories. Overdrive is not just for 'rev heads' but covers subjects in a manner that reflects on our everyday transport experiences as well as our dreams and aspirations for more exotic transport”.
You can hear past programs on:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0ah6JZN8LTYURIfNs1IIBs
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overdrive-cars-transport-and-culture/id1001084679
Web site - www.drivenmedia.com.au