Shared-mobility solutions in Britain

Scott Le Vineslevine@imperial.ac.uk

Imperial College and Carplus

ORIGAMI Project Final Conference17th April 2013

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What is shared-mobility?

• Access to use a car (or bicycle, scooter, aeroplane, etc.) on pay-as-you-go principles

• Self-drive (like car hire), rather than professional driver (like a taxi service)

• Like car hire: round-trip or one-way usage, pre-book or spontaneous

• Radically different regime of ‘auto-mobility’, as compared to private vehicle ownership

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startwork

move in with partner

scrapcar 2

retirement

actual household car access

optimum/desired household car access

Life course

Cars

ow

ned

by h

ouse

hold

access ‘deficit’

access ‘surplus’

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2

pass test

movehouse

acquirecar 2

Clark et al. (2009)

Cars come in integers

Shared-assets or accessed-assets?

http://www.ethiopiahewitt.com/projects/booth/http://www.whitbread.co.uk/whitbread/media/newspressreleases/individualnewsarticle/premierinnnewplanningpermissionsrecord.html

http://www.privategpbrighton.co.uk/taxi.html

http://cloudcomputingcompaniesnow.com/

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Who is interested?

• Carmakers: Traditional markets are in decline

• Car hire industry: Evolution of their core business, made possible by IT revolution

• Public authorities: Parking needs/impacts (revenues), GHG impacts, traffic conditions, use of active travel, accessibility-to-services, etc.

• Land developers: Reduced on-site parking needs

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Hotel Owned home

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Unpacking “shared-mobility”

• Cost structure: Trade-off between fixed and usage costs. Very high degree of variabilisation.

• Maintenance: Professional standards

• Insurance: [nearly] impossible to drive without insurance. But potentially discriminatory.

• Tracking/monitoring: Usage data tracked in real-time (then stored)

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Vulnerabilities

• Reliance on central node (server)

• Reliance on wireless communication network

• End users must accept ‘operator risk’

• Operators must accept ‘public sector risk’

• Not: Blown head gasket, or brakes need servicing, or car theft

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Example of public sector risk

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Research needs

• Predictive capacity urgently required

• Integrate shared-mobility into household travel surveys

• Reconcile stated (cf. Firnkorn 2011/2) and forecast impacts with observed network flows, parking demands, etc.

• Methods required to predict both ‘end-state’ and growth trajectory

• Incorporate within vertically-integrated travel/activity models

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Where are we going? Three thoughts

1. Look West...and East

2. Service differentiation

3. Increasing price sophistication

2006

2012Shaheen & Cohen 2012

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Where should we go? Three thoughts

1. Figure out how to address the ‘young adult’ market (requires liaising with insurance industry)

2. Identify and solve barriers to serving socially-excluded groups

3. Allow operators to experiment in controlled ways (pilot projects, etc.)