Although flying cars look great in futuristic films, reality is usually more bland. The mobility challenges for the coming decades involve applying innovations to get the most out of existing solutions. The railway, which began connecting cities 175 years ago, remains the most efficient system for transporting large numbers of people. And bicycles, which a century ago moved happily in front of trams, once again occupy a place in the current concrete jungle with growing bike lanes in which they must share space with the last to arrive, the scooter.
The transformation of the future, more than in the means of transport, focuses on the way they are used. It is a different way of understanding mobility, also a generational issue. There are fewer and fewer drivers, motorcyclists or public transport users who limit themselves to a single option. Citizens can go to work by subway, take a rental motorcycle to get to dinner with friends on time, and rent a car to spend the weekend with the family away from the city. They are not tied to a vehicle, they use the one that is fastest, most comfortable or most economical at all times.
In that sense, private vehicle ownership is destined to lose importance. “The car parked in the garage every day to only take it some weekends and holidays does not make any sense,” says Sergi Saurí, director of the Transport Innovation Center (Cenit) of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), convinced that “shared mobility will go further in the urban area.” It is a solution that can already be seen in Barcelona with rental motorcycles by the minute and in other cities with scooters. On the other hand, car rental, although it has been modernized, is still not widespread and is still residual.
The so-called mobility as a service (MaaS) platforms are called to be the solution. It is about unifying the key to all means of transport in a single mobile application instead of having a plastic card to use public transport, a mobile application for Bicing, another for the blue zone and at least five more, one for each company that offers rental motorcycles by the minute.
Some companies are taking steps to achieve this and, for example, integrate the possibility of reserving a motorcycle or ordering a taxi in the same application. The public company Barcelona Serveis Municipals (BSM), for its part, has unified the blue zone, Bicing and municipal car parks under the Smou brand. It is the path to follow, according to Saurí: “All this will be solved when it is led by the administration, which acts as arbiter with clear legislation in which the different operators are integrated.” Governance is a fundamental issue on which the administrations questioned prefer to throw balls outside. Greater integration of information and joint planning would give it an important boost taking into account that the large companies in the sector have done their homework and have increased their own innovation departments in recent times.
The technological and mental changes that are taking place must be framed in a broader discussion about public space in European cities, where what was tolerable a few years ago is no longer so tolerable. In Barcelona they are the superblocks and the green axes; in Paris, the fifteen-minute city, and in London, the ULEZ (ultra-low emissions zone). Each big city does it in its own way, but all of them share the idea that the car is no longer king. Their kingdom is divided in unequal parts between pedestrians, cyclists, users of personal mobility vehicles, public transport, taxis, VTC… It is a trend that has general consensus at a technical level, although in Spain the bike lanes and the zones low emissions are becoming another element of the culture war.
Sector experts have already overcome these debates and urge us to broaden the focus to face the coming years. “We have gotten stuck in a political debate about bike lanes that has covered up the real challenge regarding the public transport network,” says Pere Calvet, dean of the Col·legi d’Enginyeria de Camins de Catalunya. His diagnosis is clear: “Mobility in the city centers is well resolved, over long distances as well, what fails is metropolitan and regional mobility.” There it is essential to improve the offer, but also the reliability so that potential users see public transport as a real option for their daily trips.
The organizations that bring together operators are also focused on finding the energy vector of the future. The electric bus seems to be the one with the most numbers to consolidate in the future, but hydrogen and other technologies are trying to gain a foothold. It is an industry that advances in parallel with the electric car, although mobility experts always remember that an electric vehicle occupies the same space as a combustion vehicle, so it is an environmental improvement, but it has no benefit for the purposes of congestion. urban. The International Union of Public Transport (UITP), which was chaired by Calvet, considers that “doubling the use of public transport in cities by 2030 has enormous potential to reduce congestion and climate emissions, create jobs and better access.” inclusive to opportunities, free up space in cities and improve the health and air quality situation,” according to Dionisio González, director of the UITP.
Apart from public transport, the autonomous car continues to advance technologically. In various cities in the United States you can now order a taxi and have a car appear with no one behind the wheel. Brussels, on the other hand, limits these activities for the moment in Europe. In addition to engineers and technicians, experts in philosophy and ethics have been involved in its regulation, giving it a much more complex approach, with debates similar to those being had with the emergence of artificial intelligence. More likely in the short term is semi-automation, without leaving everything in the hands of the machine, with assistance when parking or even on very limited roads such as highways, without the complexity and unforeseen events that the urban environment can cause.
