‘Smart Mobility’: the transport sector in transition?

In essence, ‘smart mobility’ is the belief that by significantly increasing the application of computer science technologies in the transport sector, long-term aspirations for more efficient movement of people and goods, with fewer negative consequences, will finally be realised. In this vein, since 2010, there has been a steady stream of publications from global consultancy firms seeking at once to offer an ‘insider's guide’ to a revolution in the transport sector identified as highlylucrative, while showcasing the credentials of key personnel to provide services in that transforming market (for example, Lerner 2011, Graham 2013, Van Audenhove et al 2014, Bouton et al 2015). To this end, Arthur D Little (Lerner 2011) identified ‘niches of potential’ related to 39 ‘key technologies’ and 36 ‘potential urban mobility business models’ which would, by 2050, be contributing to a market forecast to be worth $829 billion per annum. The same firm, in a follow-up publication three years later (Van Audenhove et al 2014: 7), referred to ‘a clear trend’ to ‘Urban Mobility 2.0,’ identifying ‘[i]mperatives to shape extended mobility ecosystems of tomorrow.’ The following year, McKinsey & Co (Bouton et al 2015) titled its offering ‘urban mobility at a tipping point’.

These visions of the future show a high degree of conformity around a global perspective in which the industrialising states are assumed to undergo significant urbanisation and economic growth. Further, they share beliefs in a trend away from traditional transport systems to ‘mobility services’, the latter increasingly combining transport and digital technologies to deliver more personalised and flexible travel options. This integrative platform serves within these visions to underlie a novel mobility ‘ecosystem’, which is foreseen to nurture two technical transitions: i) the shift from internal combustion engines (ICE) powered by liquid carbon fuels to battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and ii) the adoption of road vehicles which are increasingly driven by robotic systems and digitally connected with other road system ‘agents’ in a cooperative way. Moreover, within this new ecosystem, levels of sharing of road vehicles not seen in the industrialised states since prior to mass adoption of the private car are predicted to emerge.

Introduction

This chapter argues for an understanding of connectivity through mobility by elders living in rural areas that goes beyond the traditional transport planning focus on the supply of and demand for transport services. This involves consideration of not just physical movement, but also all the other ways in which older people can be ‘mobile’ for connectivity and the wider benefits and meanings mobility brings, for example, video-calling grandchildren using computer software, finding out about shopping delivery services for use in bad weather or compiling a scrapbook about a past alpine holiday. Following a brief review of methods, a conceptual framework for mobility that can be applied across the life course is presented. The following section applies this framework as a context to understanding some of the key mobility policy and practice challenges for the promotion of the connectivity of rural elders, which relate to the availability of mobility options – cars in particular – and the associated issues of accessibility and mobility-linked social exclusion. It is concluded that the more holistic appraisal of mobility for older citizens brings important conceptual benefits. A picture emerges of rural areas being ‘car-intensive’, but less car-dependent than identified in previous studies, with accessibility for connectivity also relatively unproblematic for the majority, although with minorities representing important exceptions. Practical relevance is drawn out for planning and urban design, as well as for health and social care professionals.

Methods

The analysis draws on the quantitative survey described in Chapter One and two qualitative data-collection activities conducted specifically for the mobility and transport study that was part of the Grey and Pleasant Land (GaPL) project: 45 semi-structured interviews, for which the participants were selected to represent a range of mobility lifestyles; and 10 phenomenological interviews, with participants selected according to varying health and mobility statuses.

The GaPL survey contained a series of mobility-related questions that addressed travel patterns and behaviours, mode choice (including over time), and whether mobility played a role in either exclusion from, or engagement with, the local community. Participants in the semi-structured interviews were mostly recruited from volunteers identified through the quantitative survey, but due to the low representation in the quantitative survey sample of a particular group of interest (people who had recently given up car-driving), seven further participants were recruited from outside of the quantitative survey sample.

‘Predict and provide’ can be defined as calculating how much unconstrained demand for road travel exists and adopting policy measures and providing funding streams to deliver the required capacity. As a concept, it effectively summarises government policy towards roads for much of the second half of the 20th century, but is perhaps most closely associated with the Conservatives’ White Paper Roads for prosperity (DoT, 1989) and subsequent roads expansion programme. Walton (2003) felt able to consign predict and provide to the bin of discredited policies, although he was less than complementary about what he saw as the ‘pragmatic multimodalism’ (Shaw and Walton, 2001) emerging in its place. Writing two years after the publication of Transport 2010: The 10-year plan (DETR, 2000), which specified the policy approach enshrined in A new deal for transport: Better for everyone (DETR, 1998a), Walton's position was that the Plan was sufficiently slippery to demand further detailed critique, but within a year the government had substituted the expected ‘third annual progress report’ with a new White Paper The future of transport (DfT, 2004a). This, while not officially replacing the Plan, abandoned its targets, themselves much criticised for timidity, but now nonetheless unachievable in the face of obstacles including a crisis of delivery on the railways and the introduction of only one noteworthy road-user charging scheme, in London (Chapters One, Four and Nine).

In this chapter we assess Labour's roads and traffic policies in the decade since 1998. Following a brief contextual discussion, we turn to define the principles of a ‘sustainable’ roads and traffic policy, taking into account broad sustainability objectives and the recommendations of two special policy reviews, both inspired by the Treasury rather than the Department for Transport (DfT) and published in autumn 2006: the Eddington Review on transport, productivity and competitiveness and the Stern Review on climate change (Eddington, 2006; Stern, 2006). We then consider the extent to which ministers have embraced a sustainable roads policy in practice, examining some of the key quantitative indicators and the debate and rhetoric that surround them. Such a policy emerges as much harder to construct than predict and provide, requiring much higher levels of coordination between government departments, levels of government, delivery structures and funding lines.