Hannover, a very bikeable German city with slightly over 20% of cycling in the modal share and a fluent tram and bus network (operated by Üstra) was the host city of the last edition of the UITP Combined Mobility Platform Meeting.  Specialists from all publicly available transport modes and marketers met this time to discuss new developments and look to the future.

Times are changing

The time is long gone when bicycles were seen as competitors of public transport. More and more public transport operators include or cooperate with bike-share systems and slowly but surely, these are turning into truly public bike-share systems. Car-sharing is also high on the agenda, especially “free-floating” car-sharing (these shared cars don’t have a fixed positioning so picking up a car and dropping it off is more flexible, you book the car on the spot with your smart phone and the rental time ends when you park the car in one of the predefined zones). Free floating car-sharing is an innovative way to attract new customers to more sustainable transport (and prevent them from buying a car). In a nutshell, the introduction of any means of transport that is publicly available is something that is welcomed in the Combined Mobility Platform. And this seems to fit the new generation of young professionals – generation Y – accustomed to constant access to technology and less interested in owning a car than in quick and easy access to mobility when needed.

A post-car society

Graeme Bannister, from Frost & Sullivan consultancy firm confirms a report recently published by Deloitte which found that 25% of young Europeans (20 to 37 years old) don’t feel the need to own a car. Bannister sees chances for actors in Combined Mobility to claim this market, if they are fast enough… Innovation is speedy and the public transport sector is reputed as being slow. Other actors could step in and try and take a share of the multimodal cake. The car industry for example: Daimler (Car2Go) and BMW (DriveNow) have both already started experimenting with car sharing systems; new taxi services emerge such as Über are popping up in many markets. But that is not all – as mobility is more and more intertwined with technology and productivity, the telecoms, internet and banking sectors all have an evident interest in getting involved in mobility. It is up to public transport and bicycle experts to assert their leading position in this sector. 

No app, no city

Soon, there won’t be a city left without an app that lets you manage you multimodal mobility. Numerous cities and transport operators are working very hard indeed to make customers’ lives easier, a good example of which is the rise of integrated ticketing systems. Multimodality apps make it that much easier to combine (public) bike use with the public transport system. It facilitates getting around to the extent that it is now almost natural to use a bike/metro combination. In Austria, the Smile app gets you travel advice and tickets. In Gothenburg, the experimental UbiGo app lets 70 pilot households manage their entire mobility budget. In Strasbourg, the city is working on a Mobipass subscription which includes bike-sharing and a ticketing app. Deutsche Bahn launched the Qixxit app travel planner and ticket to keep up with fast innovations. Left right and centre, innovators are coming up with technological solutions to personal mobility management. We’re making sure cycling options are in!

About the Author

Benedicte Swennen is ECF’s Urban Mobility and Cities Policy Officer and Cities for Cyclists network manager. Prior to working for ECF, she worked for Bond Beter Leefmilieu, a Belgian (Flemish) NGO for the environment, focusing on sustainable mobility, organizing promotion campaigns and developing the long term vision on mobility. Follow Benedicte on Twitter @BenedicteECF or take a look at her contributions to the Belgium Cycle Chic blog.