According to the “Guide to Urban Mobility” prepared by World Economic Forum, by 2050 it is estimated that approximately 2.5 billion more people will live in cities and, therefore, the demand for mobility will increase.
With this scenario in mind, some communities are taking a systematic approach to rethinking the movement of people, goods, and services. Thus, they are looking for ways to reduce pollution while at the same time creating a mobility system that is committed to shared mobility in cities.
New mobility options, such as micromobility (electric bikes, electric scooters, scooters…) and shared mobility (car sharing, ride-sharing…), are becoming increasingly popular, and the reception of these services indicates that users are adapting to various options when travel time improves and services are safe and comfortable. This, therefore, creates an opportunity for cities to review their transport networks and make decisions.
The Challenges of Urban Mobility
The pace of innovation driven by technology with new mobility options has been incredible. The widespread adoption by users confirms that traditional public transport no longer fully meets the needs of all users. Nevertheless, the maximum experience and knowledge that the sector has, and the industry supporting it as an active vector of change, will allow us to overcome this challenge together.
In some parts of the world, we are already seeing how traditional mobility options provided by different entities, from public bodies to private companies, are being replaced by new solutions provided by private mobility service providers (e.g., ride-hailing services).
This creates new challenges for urban mobility:
- Complement traditional public transport systems to increase passenger numbers and reach further geographically.
- Allocate public space to create more livable cities, establishing specific protocols to manage the impact of passenger mobility.
- Optimize the response to citizens’ needs, for example, through direct consultations.
- Review urban planning processes by prioritizing more sustainable and inclusive mobility.
- Collaborate within a public-private framework.
Guidelines: What Are They and How Should They Be Used?
The purpose of the Guidelines for City Mobility is to establish a framework for cooperation between cities and people involved in mobility. These guidelines suggest collaborative practices across the public and private sectors and offer an approach developed by the World Economic Forum to achieve more environmentally friendly, sustainable, safe, efficient, inclusive, and universal mobility.
Eight Guidelines for City Mobility
- Data Sharing: Share and leverage data to optimize business operations and efficiently plan and manage mobility.
- Public Space Use and Infrastructure Impact: Strive to minimize the use of public space allocated to the overall mobility system by long-term urban planning, allowing for solutions and community stakeholder participation.
- Safety: Collaborate to ensure the physical safety, information security, and perceived well-being of all people.
- Inclusion and Equity: Serve communities of people within and outside a city to enable safety and sustainability for all, with a special emphasis on incorporating marginalized communities, to enable an equitable economy, growth, and inclusion.
- Fair Work: Work to ensure adequate working conditions, including training, compensation, and hours, to provide safe, sustainable compensation and inclusive services.
- Shared and Pooled Mobility: Strive to find ways to increase the efficiency of shared activities, passenger and freight mobility, and pooling.
- Clean Transition: Work towards zero-emission public and private fleets in alignment with the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
- Multimodal Integration: Make every effort to generate mobility-as-a-service solutions, where appropriate, that integrate multiple modes, whether public or private, to expand mobility coverage and reduce the demand for individual single-occupancy vehicle use.
These guidelines provide a starting point for establishing respectful and beneficial collaboration between cities.
What Will We Achieve with These Changes?
1. Create opportunities to share information and knowledge for future mobility activities and projects.
2. Work together to educate users about the impact of their mobility choices and encourage behavioral changes.
3. Cooperate to ensure that the basic mobility needs of all users are prioritized.
4. Prioritize collaboration and communication with users and local community stakeholders.
It is time for cities and people to focus their efforts on systematically improving urban mobility, the movement of people and goods.
The Mobility Council program will work with other global organizations to achieve this. All stakeholders involved in urban mobility must pull in the same direction to make it possible.
At Castrosua, we work every day to build a better future: cleaner and fairer cities through highly sustainable, safe, inclusive, and universal mobility. You can find more information about our contribution to urban mobility in our article “Castrosua’s Support for Sustainable Mobility in Public Transport.”
Whenever we can contribute and cooperate with the improvement of transport, we will be there.
Because with you, as far as you want to go.
Source: Guide to Mobility prepared by the World Economic Forum
