Smart Mobility, Transport Poverty and the Legal Framework of Inclusive Mobility

Smart mobility aims to provide efficient, sustainable and connected mobility solutions to congested urban centers. It is often assumed that smart mobility will benefit cities’ residents and improve overall accessibility. Nevertheless, smart mobility strategies presuppose that transport users are digitally literate, autonomous and capable of affording either public or private transportation. For the millions of citizens throughout the world who are affected by transport poverty, this is not the case. Transport poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon which is often overlooked in the legal literature. Yet this specific type of poverty can limit individuals’ upward mobility and impede their ability to exercise social and economic rights. This paper explores the phenomenon of transport poverty and delves into the possibility of designing smart mobility policies that address this type of poverty. It discusses existing or proposed policies of free public transit and explains why inclusive mobility should be regarded as a concretization of the right to equal treatment. This paper contributes to the existing scholarship on smart cities, smart mobility and fundamental rights with a novel interdisciplinary analysis of urban mobility. Furthermore, it draws attention to the need to design connected transport systems that are inclusive.