VIEWPOINTS

The Mobility Future
— Kwangyul Choi

Are shared mobility and Autonomous Vehicles to be feared or anticipated with delight?

Have you ever tried Uber, car2go, or LimeBike to move around Calgary? If you’re like me – someone trying to live without a “conventional” car in this city, you’ll be impressed by how convenient these services are. Thanks to the Internet, smartphones, and the Global Positioning System (GPS), as well as other relevant technologies, urban mobility has become smarter, easier and more diverse. Unlike in the past when one had to have a certain level of ownership to access mobility, shared mobility has started to become instrumental within the new urban environment, and Calgary is no exception. In addition, Automated Vehicles (AVs) are expected to enhance shared mobility by eliminating the need for personal ownership, through, for example, lower operating costs.[1][2][3]

Ride-hailing or sourcing services, such as Uber or Lyft, have been operating since 2009 as established, regulated, and accepted forms of transportation in most of North America’s large cities.[4] Moreover, ride-hailing companies, along with other smart transportation-rental companies, are providing other shared mobility services, termed micro-mobility, such as bikes/electric bikes, mopeds, and electric scooters. Soon, AVs or self-driving cars will also become a reality. Almost all major auto manufacturers around the world have invested a tremendous amount of money in the development of AV and have announced that they have plans to commercialize it soon.[5][6] Accordingly, there has been the mobility revolution, which can be described as zero ownership, zero emissions, and zero accidents, with these technological leaps.

However, our future with new mobility may not be that simple. Let’s consider for a moment how this so-called“emerging mobility” will change our life in coming years, particularly in terms of how we will move and where we will live.[7][8] We need only think about automobiles and their accompanying transportation infrastructure such as highways to realize the potential extent – positive as well as negative - of emerging mobility’s impact. For the past several decades, automobiles have shaped the form of many cities, as well as our ways of living and travelling within those cities.[9] Because of the automobile, most Canadian cities are characterized as suburban, reflecting a population shift from urban areas into the suburbs, a shift made viable by people’s ability to rely on the automobile as their primary mode of transportation. 

The question for me is how the influence of emerging mobility will unfold. As yet, no one seems able to provide a firm answer. Instead, many potential scenarios are presented. One such scenario envisages a reduction in the number of cars on the road, particularly in urban areas. With a wide variety of mobility options for urban residents to choose from, it is argued, residents may forgo vehicle ownership altogether.[10] Consequently, the number of cars on the urban road will decrease, and less space for cars (road and parking) will be required.[11][12][13] In this scenario, many car lanes on city streets would be transformed into bike lanes or sidewalks, resulting in a more pedestrian-friendly city-scape. However, this is not the only scenario we can anticipate. Another possible scenario is that we might inadvertently succeed in perpetuating sprawl by making in-vehicle travel time more productive with AVs. Even the AVs may induce vehicle travel that would not have occurred with a conventional car. For instance, young and older people and the impaired can use AVs without a driver. Moreover, “zero-occupancy” vehicles might easily be found on the road.[14][15][16]

In terms of residence choice, there are also several possible scenarios. On the one hand, people, particularly younger generations, may prefer to live in an urban-like environment because cars are unnecessary with the diverse mobility options now available. However, on the other hand, people may prefer to live in the suburbs because a personal automatic chauffeur would reduce or even eliminate the stress associated with driving long distances every day in heavy traffic, and, further, people would now be productive while in their vehicles. 

In alignment with federal and provincial transportation/mobility strategies, three emerging mobility options are available in Calgary today. Car2go, one of the most popular car-sharing programs in the world, first launched in July 2012, and Uber legally launched in December 2016, following a short run in 2015. In addition, The City of Calgary currently supports a two-year pilot bike-sharing project with LimeBike, which came to Calgary in October 2018. The second bike-sharing program with U-bicycle is scheduled to start in Spring 2019. Over the last several years, the number of urban mobility options has increased, and Calgary’s mobility options are expected to become more diverse as time goes by. 

Given this situation, the next question we might want to ask is to what degree emerging mobility can support the sustainable growth of our city. As with other cities and towns, transportation is central to Calgary’s future urban planning and development patterns. Emerging mobility, as part of our urban transportation strategy, presents both challenges and opportunities, and how we engage with emerging mobility today will determine how our city looks in the future. As such, now is the time for us to think about the many potential impacts of emerging mobility on our city’s built environment, and to be strategic, forward thinking, and proactive in how we manage the growing influx of this new mode of transportation. 

References

[1] Cohen, A., & Shaheen, S. (2016). Planning for Shared Mobility. https://doi.org/10.7922/G2NV9GDD

[2] Krueger, R., Rashidi, T. H., & Rose, J. M. (2016). Preferences for shared autonomous vehicles. Transportation Research Part C, 69, 343–355. 

[3] Milakis, D., Kroesen, M., & Wee, B. van. (2018). Implications of automated vehicles for accessibility and location choices : Evidence from an expert-based experiment. Journal of Transport Geography, 68, 142–148. 

[4] lewlow, R. R., & Mishra, G. S. (2017).Disruptive Transportation : The Adoption , Utilization , and Impacts of Ride-Hailing in the United States(No. Research Report UCD-ITS-RR-17-07).

[5] Fagnant, D. J., & Kockelman, K. (2015). Preparing a nation for autonomous vehicles: opportunities, barriers and policy recommendations. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice,77, 167–181.

[6] Lari, A., Douma, F., & Onyiah, I. (2015). Self-Driving Vehicles and Policy Implications: Current Status of Autonomous Vehicle Development and Minnesota Policy Implications. Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and Technology, 16(2), 735–770.

[7] Lindsay, G. (2018). The State of Play : Connected Mobility + U.S. Cities: How next generation transportation is shaping cities. Citylab Insights, (July).

[8] Zakharenko, R. (2016). Self-driving cars will change cities. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 61(September), 26–37. 

[9] Muller, P. O. (2004). Transportation and urban form-stages in the spatial evolution of the American metropolis.

[10] Menon, N., Barbour, N., Zhang, Y., Pinjari, A. R., & Mannering, F. (2018). Shared autonomous vehicles and their potential impacts on household vehicle ownership: An exploratory empirical assessment. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 1–12.

[11] Fagnant, D. J. & Kockelman, K. M. (2014). The travel and environmental implications of shared autonomous vehicles, using agent-based model scenarios. Transportation Research Part C, 40, 1–13.

[12] Nourinejad, M., Bahrami, S., & Roorda, M. J. (2018). Designing parking facilities for autonomous vehicles. Transportation Research Part B, 109, 110–127. 

[13] Zhang, W., Guhathakurta, S., Fang, J., & Zhang, G. (2015). Exploring the impact of shared autonomous vehicles on urban parking demand : An agent-based simulation approach. Sustainable Cities and Society, 19, 34–45.

[14] Harb, M., Xiao, Y., Circella, G., Mokhtarian, P. L., & Walker, J. L. (2018). Projecting travelers into a world of self-driving vehicles: estimating travel behavior implications via naturalistic experiment. Transportation, 45, 1671-1685.

[15] Harper, C. D., Hendrickson, C. T., Mangones, S., & Samaras, C. (2016). Estimating potential increases in travel with autonomous vehicles for the non-driving, elderly and people with travel-restrictive medical conditions. Transportation Research Part C, 72, 1-9.

Kwangyul Choi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Metropolitan Growth + Change in the Haskayne School of Business and the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary.