Future Mobility: Who’s in Control?
Location: Building Centre, London
Date: 22 November 2016
Conversation Panellists
Hugh Sumner – Team Principal, Sumner and Co (chairing)
Dipak Mistry – Head of Urban Mobility, Ricardo
Michaela Winter-Taylor – Head of Planning & Urban Design, Gensler
Lucy Yu – Head of MaaS, the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles
Jon Foley – Director of Transport and Mobility, BuroHappold Engineering
BuroHappold’s Director of Transport and Mobility Jon Foley reviews the Happold Foundation’s Future Mobility: Who’s in Control? Conversation
Imagine the original impact of the motorcar on the city: at first it would have been an intriguing curiosity, then a luxury item that the existing city transport infrastructure could easily accommodate. Then after a period of adaptation cities started to be redesigned around the motor vehicle. Then more recently we have started to reverse that trend and discourage car use in favour of walking, cycling, public transport for better health, safety and lower sound and air pollution.
Are we at the beginning of a similar period of disruptive change in the way transport systems work – this time compressed into a more rapid timescale?
Hugh Sumner – Team Principal, Sumner and Co (chairing)
It is the pace of this change that is most uncertain. The motorcar and the internal combustion engine are wonderfully perfected technologies. Cities are tuned not only physically but also psychologically to the private vehicle owning mentality – alongside a second tier public transport system. The growth of cycling in cities could also be seen to counteract this change: amongst the many benefits for the cyclist is greater ‘control’.
The future of mobility is all about control. At one level who is controlling the vehicle, and at another who is controlling the environment where mobility takes place. Control is such a key issue. Not just to do with “driving or not driving”. It is to do with planning and control of the transport mix (for example will we need buses?) the use of roads and public space, control of geographical space data and of the software systems.
In some ways it is ‘mind boggling’ that this is even being looked at: can we really envisage large cities changing their transport systems so massively? But there is no doubt that some very positive thinking is taking place on the topic.
Andy Martin, TfL traffic engineer
Although not everyone sees their advent as inevitable, much of the uncertainty around the introduction of connected autonomous vehicles is around timing. Can we solve all the technical issues, particularly around security and safety? The immediate assumption is that this revolutionary type of vehicle must have some sort of exclusivity in the city environment to function safely – it cannot co-exist with traditional privately driven cars? Cities, or parts thereof, must give themselves over to this form of transport. They would replace above ground public transport or at least buses would run on the same system. But what about cyclists, will they be excluded? And can you guarantee the safety of pedestrians? And in doing so, how can you stop safeguards being turned against the system by disruptive citizens or even terrorists?
Dipak Mistry – Head of Urban Mobility, Ricardo
‘Mobility as a service’ is a common term amongst transport planners but little used in broader built environment circles at the moment. This phrase encompasses the idea that in future individuals will only need to specify that they need to get from A to B. It is up to a mobility service provider to define the best means for this to happen. Research in this area has explored all sorts of permutations in terms of ownership, business models and technologies so that policy makers can be ready to react. These are in early stages at the moment but the discussion is a very interesting one.
Lucy Yu – Head of MaaS, the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles
If the autonomous vehicle is to become a reality in the city then it will have an enormous impact on the built environment. Not just roads and parking but buildings also. For example the predicted changes in ownership patterns of vehicles will need less private parking spaces but more space for collective charging, valeting and maintenance – not unlike the changes we have seen for city bikes but at a far larger scale. Can this be done efficiently outside the city centre for vehicles?
Shoreditch Quarter reimagined for the London 2050 Developing City Exhibition. Courtesy of Gensler
Michaela Winter-Taylor – Head of Planning & Urban Design, Gensler
Transport planners and their advisors may have a good vision of how important future mobility can be to society, but there are doubts about how prepared the public sector is in general. The culture of development planning is still very reactive at the moment and it is important for the sector to realise that it has an active role to play
Fiona Blakely, Development planner
In conclusion this is a topic where there are still more questions than answers. What is clear is that, although the technology providers – both vehicles and software – may be the sector driving development at the moment, there is no single sector who is really ‘in control’; both now and, it is foreseen, into the future.
Jon Foley – Director of Transport and Mobility, BuroHappold Engineering