“Although people are still extremely connected to their cars, the way we get from place to place is evolving from a monoculture of automobiles into a culture featuring a mix of much more sophisticated systems of transportation.”

In the U.S, there is a bit of an obsession with cars: 82% of commuters use a personal car, and there are only around 10 billion public transit trips per year (7 billion when not counting NYC) compared to 50 billion trips in the EU. EVs are on the rise - 55% of new car sales expected to be EVs by 2040 - but there are numerous problems that need to be addressed before they become the norm. Ensuring clean energy grids are charging the vehicles, sourcing raw materials for batteries in an environmentally-friendly and humane way, recycling batteries, and making charging stations widespread enough to make owning an EV convenient are all key problems the automotive industry face. Incentives and regulations (especially by the Biden administration) are attempting to push the industry forwards, but it’s still unclear how a full transition to EVs will be achieved when these complex problems exist.

But here’s still hope for the transportation sector with the potential for immediate change: shifting away from car monoculture and moving towards sustainable mobility. Mobility means ensuring people have access to more than one mode of transport - which can promote equity and accessibility, improve public health, and reduce car emissions. Within the mobility sector, there are two key stakeholders that seem to be misaligned on their goals for sustainability: e-scooter and bike-sharing companies like Uber (Lime) and Lyft (Citibike), and cities. Ride-sharing companies are at the forefront of sustainability, as they are motivated to get widespread use of a more sustainable mode of transportation, and improve the customer experience through better infrastructure and availability (safer bike lanes, more bike docks, etc.). Cities, however, are trying to solve the problem of congestion through investments in bigger roads, and lesser investments in public transportation. This puts them in a following position in the move towards sustainability - they are merely responding to existing problems caused by cars, rather than resolving the problem of why cars are used in the first place.

<aside> 🚌

Two of the biggest sustainability challenges facing the transportation sector are:

  1. The first-mile/last-mile problem - Deloitte says “if people lack a convenient, affordable way to get on a bus or train, they are far more likely to opt for a personal vehicle, contributing to the gridlock and poor air quality that plagues so many cities.”
  2. Impact of city zoning on commute length and safety - Vox says “thanks to the car, suburban neighborhoods with homes could be built farther away from restaurants, schools, shops, and more — contributing to what we know as ‘sprawl’... This came at the expense of public transportation, walkability, and the ability of most Americans to carry on their lives without a car. The consequences of designing entire communities around car use are manifold: Car-centric development is harmful to the environment, discriminatory, expensive, and bad for public health.” </aside>

The first challenge is something likely to be solved by ride-sharing companies:

“More than half of car trips taken annually in the United States cover less than five miles, making those journeys open to short-range alternative modes such as e-scooters and bikes.” - Deloitte

For these types of trips, public transport is usually less useful - the trips are short enough that the first-mile/last-mile problem is a hindrance and people will opt for driving, cycling, or e-scootering. So, these companies need to ensure that their bicycles and e-scooters are numerous and well-placed, always available to a potential rider going a short distance. An interesting problem bike-sharing companies face is understanding where and when demand for bicycles exists, meaning that they need to understand which stations need bikes available and which stations need empty docks for riders to return bikes depending on the time of day. Citibike introduced ‘Bike Angels’ to help this problem - their website says “as a Bike Angel, you ride bikes from crowded stations to those that are running low on bikes, making the system work better for everyone.” This program utilizes reward-based crowdsourcing to improve usability, which gets more riders on the app. Programs like this will be integral for ride-sharing companies to improve usability, and hence sustainability.

The second challenge is for cities to solve. In the decades after WWII, city development took on a car-centric approach that gave rise to the concept of ‘urban sprawl,’ and now with many concerns arising around congestion, public health, accessibility, and the environment, cities need to rethink how they are designed. There are numerous ways they can do this: “urban planning literature suggests that the density required to have walkable neighborhoods is achievable by just having suburban neighborhoods be built closer together, say, by getting rid of lawns, and downsizing to something similar to the bungalow neighborhoods of outer Chicago. Gradually repairing American urban sprawl and retrofitting suburbs…make neighborhoods more walkable and amenable to public transportation.”

Something that arises among these two challenges is the clash between ride-sharing companies and cities: “e-scooters became a polarizing mode of transportation in many cities. As the scooters could be picked up, used, and dropped off at any location within a city, the scooters were heralded by many as a convenient form of clean transportation for short distances. Others, however, found them more of a nuisance, with scooters littering sidewalks, and many users disobeying traffic laws.” So, it is imperative that cities work with ride-sharing companies rather than against them, like building infrastructure that gives riders a safe way to travel (so they don’t resort to sidewalks), and designated parking areas. All of these efforts will reduce reliance on cars and the automotive industry to improve sustainable transportation, and instead bring mobility and city planning into focus to achieve more sustainable transport.