Mobility of the future: requirements and approaches

Mobility is subject to diverse trends and influences. Demographic change, increasing demands on quality, sustainability and resource economy as well as technological change create new requirements and enable new solutions. Mobility participants expect a reliable offer with high comfort and low costs. These customer needs are not systematically managed today. The multimodal mobility chain is not viewed and developed holistically from the customer's point of view. Mobility needs to be financed, requires space, needs energy and generates emissions:

• Finances: A holistic approach is needed in which all costs are considered transparently. This includes investments, costs for operation and maintenance, for impaired quality of life due to noise and air pollution as well as long-term costs of climate change.
• Space: Space economics and space efficiency are becoming increasingly important, especially in urban areas. Mobility consumes both private and public space. This is not taken into account enough in the development of the urban system.
• Energy and emissions: Mobility consumes around 25 to 30% of total energy in developed societies. A sensible energy concept and the reduction of CO2 emissions are decisive for achieving climate and environmental goals and for improving the quality of life.

Bringing together individual actors and service providers to build a fully functioning multimodal mobility system.

The number of actors and service providers within the mobility sector has increased over the last ten years. The expansion through mobility platforms with real-time offers, shared individual transport and offers in non-motorised transport increase the complexity of the mobility system. These actors operate in their silos and prevent the urgently needed paradigm shift towards an integral development and optimisation of an attractive, powerful and efficient mobility system.

The lack of an overall view leads to more regulations and increasingly detailed specifications per mobility silo and promotes a counteraction instead of cooperation. Accordingly, the mobility system is not in balance, the attractiveness of the transport system decreases and trust in the transport system is lost.

Instead of an overarching set of goals for the system as a whole, we are dealing with a jumbled set of actors with particular goals, target values and mandates. The sum of the particular goals does not lead to a functioning whole. Although mobility per se is multimodal, all actors operate monomodally. 

As a result, there is no transparency with regard to measures, initiatives and financing options. Individual decisions are not very efficient from an overall perspective. Synergies that could be created by bringing together complementary competences and a joint development of the mobility of the future are not or insufficiently used. Instead, each role - i.e. owner, purchaser, infrastructure provider, transport company and private mobility provider - only sees its own part of the mobility chain.

The major players in the transport system operate in five differently delineated dimensions:

1. four groups of players

• Railway undertakings (RUs)
• Road transport operators
• Road infrastructure managers
• Users/providers of road services

2. three transport modes

• Public transport rail
• Public transport road
• Motorised private transport (MIV), non-motorised transport (LV) and other mobility forms Road

3. divided into infrastructure and vehicles

4. resources for operation, revision and maintenance

5. spheres of influence of the authorities

The five dimensions divide the mobility offer differently. With the exception of the RUs, no actor has all the operating resources for its offer. The authorities and regulators ignore the resources for revision and maintenance. Road-based mobility is based on an infrastructure provided by authorities at three levels (federal, cantonal and municipal).

This means that the inconsistency of the overall system is "pre-programmed".

• Choice of means of transport
  The resource "time" is the most important criterion for the choice of transport mode. Transfers are seen as reducing comfort, and a longer journey time is accepted compared to a journey with transfers. For this reason, a loss of time in traffic jams is also accepted to a certain extent for a transfer from private transport to public transport.

• Significance of different settlement types
  In sparsely populated areas, the resource land is usually available in sufficient quantities or at low cost, but in centres it is limited and expensive. Conversely, public transport is attractive in centres and densely populated areas, but often unattractive in rural areas, and private transport is indispensable. Therefore, a combination of MIV-public transport journeys from less densely populated areas to the centres is necessary. Multimodal hubs with parking spaces are needed for this.

• Multimodal hubs

  Multimodal hubs within public transport at train and bus stations usually require little space and are designed to allow short walking distances. Multimodal hubs with participation of MIV require parking space that practically corresponds to the shifted traffic flow (occupancy rate of 1.1 persons in commuter traffic). The space requirement for parking limits the size of such hubs in two respects: on the one hand, the distances within the hub become too long with increasing size, on the other hand, the resource "space" is precious near the centre and in the vicinity of stations with a strong supply and in competition with other uses. From a resource and ecological point of view, the changeover should be decentralised with small facilities and not close to the centre.

• Reducing the use of private transport in city centres

  For various reasons, MIV is limited in centres. This leads to a backlog that corresponds to the retained volume in terms of area. With appropriate metering, traffic peaks are smoothed out, similar to a retention basin against floods. With regard to the different gait curves before and after the backwater, the backwater represents a system component and therefore cannot be eliminated in principle. This is consistent with the considerations on the optimal choice of transport mode.

For the next leap forward in development, a clear, transparent vision of goals supported by all actors is needed.

The consistency of the overall system cannot be achieved through a monolithic overall structure. Nevertheless, the mobility chain must be designed and optimised as a whole from a customer and overall economic perspective. The solution is a jointly supported target image. This can be developed through a jointly defined dialogue process between the actors to clarify roles and responsibilities and define the rules of the game, create transparency and the right conditions. 

The model is based on the roles that actually exist today. It shows how today's partial tasks and partial responsibilities can be combined into a consistent whole. The model brings the different fields of responsibility of the mobility system into a logical context.

Figure 2 shows a model for cooperation as a concrete business process model. The course for an optimal overall system is set in the basics of strategic development, in the elaboration of the target picture and with the necessary measures, i.e. with the provision or construction of new offers. This process must be carried out jointly and in consideration of the effects in the overall system. For example, new services in regional transport have repercussions on spatial development or new transport measures in cities have repercussions on the superordinate road network.

In the previous mode ("current"), the actors develop their strategies independently of each other, which leads to conflicts and inconsistencies in the operation. In an "ideal" future mode ("Future"), the stakeholders struggle in a coordinated approach to reach a common understanding of the relevant trends, the changing environment and the past performance of the mobility system. 

On this basis, they define its further development in a common target picture. This then results in individual, coordinated development steps and measures by the individual actors. Conflicts and different objectives can be discussed in the planning phase without time pressure.

The interaction of the actors and the interlinking of the forms of mobility into an overall system can be clearly represented by means of a consistent mobility model. The actors are not restricted in their responsibility by regulations, but can assume their responsibility entrepreneurially in the mobility chain. Discussible foundations are created that allow the actors to systematically approach their own development with a view to the overall system and to resolve superficially contradictory requirements.

As experts for high performance organisations, hpo has a holistic view of the mobility system, including all requirements for strategy, structure and operation. Our experience in the mobility sector gives us a holistic understanding of the requirements of the different actors. 

We provide targeted support in the clarification of roles as well as the development, implementation and management of a standardised and scalable concept for mobility hubs. This also includes the possibility of individual modularisation of mobility hubs according to local conditions. This creates the conditions for a high-performance and sustainable, climate-neutral transport system.