Towards User-Centric Transport in Europe

Global socio-economic and environmental megatrends are urging for a paradigm shift in mobility and transport. An action plan for the coherent implementation of innovative transport and mobility solutions in Europe is thus urgently needed and should be sustained by a wide range of societal stakeholders. The EU-funded Mobility4EU project developed such an action plan considering all modes of transport of passengers and freight. The action plan concentrates on user-centric issues and collaboration potential and synergies between modes. This contribution details the methodology of successful consultation with a very broad and diverse stakeholder community and summarizes major insights of the analysis and the resulting action plan towards an inclusive, seamless and sustainable transport system in Europe.

This paper outlines the scenario-building approach of the Mobility4EU project that aims to create a vision and action plan for mobility and transport in 2030. Scenario building is the first step of the Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis (MAMCA), the methodology used to conduct a broad stakeholder consultation. To emphasize the participative nature of the scenario building, the scenarios were created using the intuitive logics technique and participatory workshops. Each scenario describes future trends and technological, organisational or policy-related solutions. Based on a survey of stakeholders, “policy & legislative framework” and “lifestyle and user behaviour” emerged as pivotal uncertainties to steer the scenario building. They provided the basis for the development of four scenarios: Data World, Digital Nomads, Slow is Beautiful, and Minimum Carbon. The paper describes the trends and solutions that comprise these scenarios.

The objective of this paper is to establish a comprehensive view of societal trends that have an impact on mobility and logistics in the future. Based on a review of scientific literature, the output of European research projects and reports from consultancies, the result of this investigation provides a broad and comprehensive set of factors that influence, and will influence in the future, mobility and logistics. The set is composed of 29 trends organised under 9 larger categories covering economic issues, societal issues, urbanisation, the environment, the digital society, new business models, safety, security and the legislative framework. The present analysis has greatly benefitted from the concept of liquid modernity developed by Bauman that enabled a broad and complete view on the dynamics of society and mobility. It allows describing linkages between social and economic trends, and between society and technology, especially information and communication technology. Thus, the added value of this contribution is its systematic approach allowing to describe this complex topic in an exhaustive manner while focussing on links and dependencies.

Transport plays a key role in delivering on the Paris Agreement, the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda. While providing essential services to society and economy, transport is also an important part of the economy and it is at the core of a number of major sustainability challenges, in particular climate change, air quality, safety, energy security and efficiency in the use of resources. This chapter identifies the linkages between decarbonisation pathways, policy design, coalition building and institutional frameworks. The analysis shows that there are critical interlinkages between these aspects. Decarbonisation of the transport sector is not possible through isolated measures. A broad range of local and national actions are needed to bring the sectors on to low-carbon development path. Furthermore, a holistic policy approach is needed to deliver on wider sustainable development objectives. Addressing a broader range of policy objectives can help forming coalitions and consensus among key political and societal actors. Finally, Consensus oriented institutions are needed to maintain a stable policy environment that enables the long-term transitions towards a low-carbon development path. The chapter identifies the potential for land transport climate change mitigation actions at the local and national level, opportunities for synergies of sustainable development and climate change objectives and governance and institutional issues affecting the implementation of measures.

Lack of accessible transport vehicles and services prevents people with disabilities from actively and fully participating in the society, thus depriving them of the freedom of movement. Mainstreaming disability aspects following the universal design concept guarantees that the deliverables of a transport-related research project do not result in new barriers for people with disabilities and they can enjoying the benefits of the innovation and development on equal basis with other passengers. Using the method of mainstreaming disability does not exclude the necessity of conducting special disability-related transport research. This twin-track approach can significantly increase the accessibility of transport for all.

The concept of universal design in reference to a strategy to counter social exclusion was first coined by the architect Ronald Mace. He defined Universal design (UD) as “the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design”. This paper will look into the use of UD as a policy objective for transport policy, using Norwegian experience as an example. UD was adopted as one of the four major policy objectives in Norwegian transport policy in 2009. However, from 2018 onwards UD is no longer a main policy objective. This experience with UD as a policy objective is used as an empirical backdrop for a more principal discussion on the usefulness of UD in transport and mobility. I conclude by pointing at UD as a useful vision, but difficult policy objective.

People are fitter and more mobile than ever before, but transport can still be an issue in later life due to physiological and cognitive challenges. This chapter examines findings from four focus groups with 36 older people examining the importance of mobility and future changes in mobility and transport. Older people were generally sceptical of potential transport futures, though they welcome technologies that reduce physical difficulty in mobility, gave real-time information, and reduced issues with interchange. There were mixed feelings of automated vehicles, often dependent upon the individual’s willingness to accept technology taking over their own skills and abilities, trust in the technology and concerns over future built environments.

There is a growing demand for public transport. It provides sustainable mobility that tackles air pollution and climate change as well as adapts to the needs of the elderly, commuters and a growing urban population. However, in order to become a real alternative for the car and to attract other customer groups as well as retain existing passengers, public transport needs to be improved and become more user centered. A user-centric public transport system contains three aspects: a strong(er) focus on customer satisfaction is needed; it is necessary to research customer satisfaction thoroughly and have a closer look at different perceptions of service quality of various customer groups; and the involvement of users in the design, planning and implementation of public transport services is important. Some examples, best practices and outcome of various user-centric approaches in Europe and elsewhere are described in this article.

Mobility using vehicles with internal combustion engines is one of the major sources of pollutant emissions in urban areas the world over. This article reviews some relevant actions of cities to reduce such emissions and proposes strategies to improve their effectiveness. One particularly important challenge is the electrification of buses, requiring an infrastructure plan to ensure the fleet can operate. The metropolitan region of Barcelona has mobility planning and also a plan to improve air quality. This article examines their compatibility and proposes a joint action to make the most of synergies and achieve the targets in terms of reducing pollution. The urgent need to improve air quality also demands commitment on the part of all parties involved to act together and agree future actions to be carried out.

Starting from the assumption that development of urban areas is linked to mobility and access to transportation, the paper investigates car-sharing services as an active instrument for urban development. It hypothesizes that purposeful implementation of car-sharing invigorates “sleeping” urban areas, and potentially turns them into places of high urban and real estate value. For testing this hypothesis, a custom made simulation software was designed for application on the interactive modeling table CityScope. The tool enables the dynamic analysis of urban accessibility in the form of heatmaps and lines out with a special “Impact Mapping” feature the change of accessibility through car-sharing. Using demographic and mobility data of the city of Hamburg, the paper demonstrates how the accessibility of cities can be analyzed with the tool, and how appropriate areas for car-sharing services can be identified.

Active mobility is related to various positive effects and is promoted in urban planning, transport planning, and in public health. The goals of these three disciplines differ in many respects but have a strong overlap in the ambition to foster active mobility. Until now, efforts for strengthening active mobility have typically not been combined, but rather promoted separately within each discipline. This paper presents a review of research on determinants and impacts of active mobility and of policy measures for supporting active mobility, including the three disciplines of transport planning, urban planning, and public health. The paper further shows the different perspectives and ambitions of the three disciplines and, simultaneously, the substantial synergies that can be gained from an interdisciplinary collaboration in research and practice.

This paper reviews the data from a 6-month transport project in Bologna, Italy, which aimed to reduce car journeys and increase active travel through gamification and rewards. 667 participants who had registered via a smartphone app, called BetterPoints, and identified themselves as ‘everyday car users’ were included in the sample. Behavioural categories based on engagement and the frequency and maintenance of tracked sustainable/active trips were proposed as a way to understand the data and to tailor future interventions. 47% of the 667 everyday car users showed some form of maintained engagement and behavioural change throughout the project. It was concluded that gamification and incentives can motivate travel behaviour change, but that more work is to be done to understand the links between user categories and intervention components in order to dynamically adapt and optimise the programme.

Blockchain technology in the last 3–4 years has attracted a great deal of attention due to its potential for the disruption various sectors of the economy including the financial sector, and more recently the mobility and logistics domain. The technology, which was developed as the foundation for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has developed much further with creation of Ethereum and the concept of “smart contracts.” This chapter discusses the position of blockchain technology in a hyperconnected environment, and analyses a prototypical logistics scenario where the technology could be used. We describe the characteristics of blockchain technology and provide examples of how it is being applied for mobility and logistics. The chapter concludes by considering particular opportunities for mobility and logistics based on the current characteristics of the technology, and also identified a number of challenges faced by the technology.

The Physical Internet will change the way that goods are handled, stored, packaged and transported across the supply chain. It mimics the Digital Internet, as freight in the Physical Internet would travel seamlessly as data is exchanged in Internet. Physical Internet has become a key element to achieve ALICE vision (Alliance for Logistics Innovation through Collaboration), representing shippers and logistics service providers. In order to achieve this vision, research challenges in five different areas should be tackled: sustainable, safe and secure supply chains; corridors, hubs and synchromodality; information systems for interconnected logistics; global supply network coordination and collaboration; and urban logistics. A survey launched by ALICE gathered the shippers’ perspective on the realization of the Physical Internet, including as key factors the transition required (business and governance models, regulation) as well as the barriers/triggers for its implementation. Future steps will focus on gaining endorsement on this vision.

Carbon footprint accounting is becoming a topic of great interest, with special relevance in the freight transport sector. That is not only due to environmental concerns but also to regulations and marketing issues (i.e. brand image, competition or internal procedures for a better development). This Chapter shows that there is no extended knowledge on how to implement common methodologies in the transport sector. Training is crucial, even when using one of the common standards, as depending on the different stages while implementing the methodology, results may differ. Therefore, the transport sector is facing a lack of training and education on the field, and this Chapter intends to provide some of the current requirements that the market is demanding on carbon footprint accounting.

The transport sector is going through major changes. Global challenges and megatrends such as climate change, urbanization, safety and security concerns, and servitization are driving transport system developments towards sustainability and user-centricity. Over the past few years, Mobility as a Service (MaaS) has become a common term for the idea of providing the end user a one-stop shop for discovering, accessing and paying for a wide variety of transport options with varying pricing models. While multimodal information and local ticketing integrations are common, scalable comprehensive solutions are still lacking. This paper identifies key challenges for different stakeholders and their potential implications on the way towards integrated and inclusive sustainable servitization of mobility.

This chapter discusses the current and future demand side as well as the future supply side of the European (air) transport market, taking an intermodal, user-centric and data driven approach. After introducing future passenger demand profiles, according passenger needs and requirements towards the European transport sector are presented. Having applied passenger-centric assessment areas and respective key performance indicators to evaluate the performance of current as well as future European mobility solutions, several gaps and bottlenecks in need of improvement in order to meet future mobility goals are revealed and discussed.

Personalised services is a field in rapid development. There are plenty of contexts in transport where personalisation could apply, since not all travellers have the same preferences and needs (due to functional limitations, age, or other reasons). Also, not all drivers drive the same way, even if they belong to the same age cluster. In this article, the personalised HMI in four different mobility-related areas and systems is discussed, i.e. multimodal routing, infomobility services, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and driving training on driving simulators. Relevant developments in various research initiatives are presented as examples, whereas their evaluation results by real users are discussed.

The digital economy creates new business models. These models are based upon platforms that enable both producers and consumers to connect to the ecosystem and create mutual value. A lot of data gets generated in this process, which is core virtue of these systems. Mobility service providers, including airlines, offer mostly physical assets these days. This article intends to depict the most important concepts in terms of data driven companies and will illustrate how the airline industry will be able to profit from this transformation. While today airlines are seen the bridge between airport to airport, a digital transformation has the opportunity to link air traffic with ground transportation modes, making a travel journey seamless.