mobility ecosystem

Sociability

The emergence of a new social order and collaborative consumption is driving our society toward unforeseen but exciting new directions in future mobility. The rise of "sociability", instead of efficiency, and citizens’ environmental preferences appear to be more important drivers of both the pursuit of specific emission measures and the adaption of climate plans. Changing social structure is reshaping almost every aspect of society.

Firstly, a new shape of collaborative economy is rising, disrupting the traditional ownership-based mobility paradigm. Highlighting the influence of a new model of organic economic growth, evidences are emerging that beyond a certain point, growth does not increase human well-being and the ultimate solution lies with sustainable development through financial and ecological necessity and new sustainable mobility investment policies (such as rate of return on investment should be lower, around 1.5%) toward “Our Common Future”. New collaborations are emerging between political platforms and economists. These economic parameters and social changes are reflected in the proposed model in the estimation of life-cycle assessment, environmental benefits and social impact estimation to quantify urban livability.

Secondly, demographic changes have profound impact on urban mobility. The culture of multimodal mobility, for instance in downtown Toronto, is dominated by young single women in the real estate market, leading to a surprising but welcoming travel behaviour change. Roughly 60% people live and work within downtown. A global trend of stagnated vehicle growth is reflected in changing travel patterns - for instance, only half of people use a vehicle and over one-third use transit and cycling (current mode share 2.2%) - has emerged as the fastest growing of transportation modes followed by walking. As a result, vehicle mode share has been falling 0.5% annually while transit share has been increasing at same rate. These findings lay the foundation of a future modal share, determine the estimation of reduced vehicle trips bringing additional density and diversity of land-uses in urban centres and corridors.

Thirdly, facing a changing mobility landscape and affording people more choices, the automotive industry (Original Equipment Manufacturers, OEM) is forced to rethink the diversity in business models and gradually move towards multimodal urban mobility solutions. OEMs are introducing carsharing and ebike with a major focus on a "shared transit" system that will eventually replace traditional static mobility services. Technology companies and new players are entering the market as service integrators. Reflecting the changes in the mobility industry, the proposed mobility model develops the capacity of all possible elements using industry parameters to capture the appropriate level of local and technological context and determine an expected level of usage.

Finally, the power of collaboration and sharing through digital technologies to transform consumption pattern, design goods to last longer while reducing production, and veering towards distributed, connected communities that will be controlled by many through peer trust. Unprecedented global urbanization is recreating the city as economic centre, giving rise to increasing online and immediate delivery services that replace the need for trips and create more shorter trips. These socioeconomic variables and consumption pattern are reflected in the proposed model as key indicator for estimating the scale of new mobility demand.