08
02 BEYOND FRAGMENTED
TRANSPORT
«
CITY EXPERT VOICE
Private transport will
increase in the future
but will no longer mean
a car of one's own.
The new approach will
be ‘use, not own’, and
people will instead book
places in the city's gigantic
fleet of vehicles.
«
PROF. DR. ANDREAS KNIE
Mobility researcher at
WZB Social Science Center Berlin
Urban mobility in the digital era means more than just individual
vehicles, such as cars, buses, and bikes, moving people and goods
around in the urban space. Digitalization reinforces interconnection
between vehicles, underlying infrastructures (roads, rails, sensors
and networks) as well as transport operations and value-added services,
such as integrating platforms.
TOWARDS THE BLENDED JOURNEY
Analyzing existing and upcoming urban mobility solutions, we see a
development continuum. At one end are individual solutions that
address one aspect of urban mobility: parking apps or e-scooters, for
instance. Development is progressing along the continuum toward
more integrated solutions. Google Maps, for example, is moving
in that direction. In selected regions, it now permits users to create
blended journeys that combine transit directions with different
modes of transport such as biking and ride-sharing segments 1 .
At present, it is the individual solutions that are having the most
immediate impact on urban mobility. As the sharing economy gains
traction, the popularity of services comprising concepts such as car
sharing, bike sharing, ride sharing, and smart parking has exploded.
Most notably, car sharing has surged in Germany, growing from just
116,000 registered users in 2008 to 2,460,000 in 2019 2 . While the
market for on-demand, free-float car sharing is experiencing further
consolidation, as illustrated by BMW’s and Daimler’s creation
of the common platform ShareNow, smaller players have emerged
that are tapping into the growing field of car sharing communities
1) Google Maps will now let users combine transit directions with biking and ride-sharing,
The Verge 2019: https://www-theverge-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/8/27/20835131/google-maps-combine-transit-biking-ride-sharing
2) Statistics on car sharing in Germany, German Car Sharing Association 2019: https://carsharing.de/
sites/default/files/uploads/datenblatt_carsharing_in_deutschland_stand_01.01.2019_final.pdf
(only available in german language. For translation support contact: [email protected] )