[sustran] Re: New Mobility Honor Roll - For comment

[Chris Bradshaw]

> Subject: [sustran] New Mobility Honor Roll - For comment


Eric,

A most impressive list.  Thanks for pulling together your thoughts.

Although there is much to do to promote the ideas you mention so that they
are more widespread, there are many ideas yet to be "planted."  Does New
Mobility have some to promote?

When you were posting it, I was attending a two-day meeting of carshare
organizations from across North America.

I find carsharing to be only the beginning of many additional innovations,
primarily because it breaks down car-access into the smallest practical
units, the hour and the kilometre, making ownership or exclusive access
unnecessary and even inferior.

1. The opportunity to link housing and car-access so that a housing unit
comes with access to one or more cars and other vehicles, with the billing
integrated into the rent or house payments.  This linking will show up both
in a) zoning rules that should either relax or eliminate the minimum parking
requirements when such an arrangement exists and in b) the minds of housing
consumers and their bankers who link in their minds the two markets,
realizing that when car-sharing is available, immense savings are possible,
freeing up income for increased housing quality.

2. A similar situation should occur with employment.  A job should provide
access to a workplace car, both for business travel and personal travel for
trips starting and ending at the place of work.  How many people would
forego driving a car to work if they had such access _at_ the place of work?
How many employers would appreciate avoiding the choice between a) providing
cars for business travel and b) requiring the employee provide such a
vehicle, knowing that cars were available at the workplace that could be
used (and for personal trips as well).  And this car-access would have its
maintenance and allocation-system provided by others for a lump monthly fee?
Finally, it would open the door for the employer to start showing some
interest in the challenges employees face in not just commuting to their
workplaces, but other transportation as well.  After all, transportation
costs, as the #2 item on the employee's budget, is worth a look in terms of
reducing it, and therefore reducing upward pressure on wages and on health
and lost-time costs.

3. With a growing fleet of these cars, their superior qualities when used as
_rideshare_ vehicles will become quite apparent.  There will be no
restriction on any of the riders taking the wheel -- especially important
when the driver is ill or away on vacation -- thus keeping the arrangement
going without glitches.  There will be no need for participants,
alternately, to each have their own car, so that a daily or weekly rotation
can be effected.  Or finally, there will be no need to buy special pool
vehicles (mini-buses), when suitable cars are available.  _And_, such
arrangement will be ideal to make carsharing itself workable in suburbs,
where few locations can optimize both weekday carshare demand and evening
and weekend carshare demand (unlike the denser, more mixed-use older areas),
and thus the best optimization will require the cars to move between the
residential and workplace locations each workday.

4. Finally, it is a small step to allow shared-cars-as-pooled-cars to
"graduate" to becoming part of the transit system.  Not only would a good
dose of technology allow shared cars to be used for one-way trips (being
dropped off at stations other than where they were picked up, to be used for
"nested" trips in which, while user A is visting a destination for three
hours, user B uses the car for an errand), but each _seat_ in such vehicles
could -- either at rush hour or at other high-volume periods -- become
separate units, assigned by the central computer to individual riders
waiting at joint transit-shared-car depots as parts of longer but more
direct commutes.  A shared car could be picked up by a driver who then
follows a pick-up schedule within his neighbourhood as dictated by a
dashboard screen, droping off some of his riders at stations along the way,
picking up replacements, and eventually ending up near his place of work,
perhaps with a couple riders still aboard, but with one of these getting the
"assignment" to assume the driver's seat and continue taking instructions
until reaching his/her workplace, with the vehicle eventually being parked
in a workplace for various single-user trips, until getting used for an
evening multi-commute to a neighbourhood.

5. In smaller rural communities, shared cars could have an even more
versatile role.  Where such communities lack a transit or even a taxi
service, let along car-rental or delivery service, the shared vehicles could
serve all these, with an insurance system that would allow the vehicles to
be used for people to drive others for hire.  Such versatility could be
especially important where the demand for any one service is not great
enough for a dedicated vehicle, but there would be enough for the vehicle
serving the range of uses over the day and week, with perhaps the city
magistrate's staff playing the role of vehicle/system provider and "referee"
between the various users.

Think of the results:

-  the reductions in the # of vehicles to be accommodated on our roads and
    in parking lots (and in store sizes)
- the reductions in driving, especially in neighbourhoods
- the reduction in manufacturing costs
- the increase in vehicle maintenance
- the reduction in vehicle size in terms of being big enough for the trip
and no more.
- the reduction in cold-engine starts
- the opportunities to monitor and control driver behaviour
- the increase in access by the poor to motor-vehicle use at modest costs
   (and less resort to owning/using very old, unreliable cars)
- the increased quality of vehicles manufactured for such a market.
- the increase in viability of stores and services within walking distance
   (and thus a resuscitation of main streets)

Chris Bradshaw
Ottawa
(pedestrian advocate and carshare provider)