Andreas Røhl on All Things Mobility

Moving people efficiently from A to B has always been one of the greatest challenges facing cities. In Europe, you’ll find the whole spectrum of mobility systems and solutions that we rely on to go about our daily routines. Andreas Rohl, Mobility Lead at Gehl and mobility expert gives his insights into the contemporary mobility environment, and why this great challenge remains.

How would you describe the mobility environment in 2018?

The feeling I have of the current mobility environment is one of a fear of missing out! We hear so much about different mobility technologies, from self-driving cars to mobility as a service, and all the baggage, the promises and the possibilities that these technologies evoke. This noise means a lot of the key mobility players are in different spaces when it comes to thinking about what systems or what solutions can best fit the needs of their future populations. With so many possibilities developing in parallel, this breeds a fear of missing out on the ‘right’ choice.

Everyone wants to be the first mover, be a mobility leader but no one really knows what will become the dominant technology or trend or how to apply it. This isn’t a new situation we find ourselves in but choosing what to support or not is a big leap, and one that could have significant implications for compatibility between localities, cities and regions. It requires dedicated analysis and reflection not only by the technology providers but — and maybe even more so — on the city side of things.

On a different scale, but just as important in cities, is the introduction of different micro mobility devices. It can be easy to brush these things aside, as gimmicks, but as we see in the US, we as planners don’t necessarily anticipate the pick-up with younger generations in cities.
Electric scooters could impact mobility habits as much as the bicycle and therefore require a focus that matches the ‘big’ mobility systems, the trains, the roads, the buses. It is an extremely exciting time for new mobility solutions…I will leave it at that!

Then on a separate, more general level across mobility planning I see a shift in conversation towards quality of life as the starting point. In Riga where we work currently, we in agreement with the city, have framed transport within a quality of life perspective. And this sort of framing is happening more and more when we think about our mobility systems; the starting point being; what kind of life do we want in our cities and then we can start speaking about mobility and about how the ways we move can support the quality of life we aim for. In short, transport is becoming too important to leave only with us transport planners.

I think in Denmark and across Europe, we see cities trying to balance not too many trips by car and not too much congestion with good public transport coverage and many connecting spaces. These combined promote a certain quality of life; of being able to choose, of convenience and reliability. Common best practice can be seen in many of the Swiss cities, the German cities and others like Vienna. The best of these cities mobility-wise provide consistent, high quality rail-based public transport options for citizens combined with a significant market share for cycling and walking, thereby providing both diverse and high-quality options.

A question we hear from many cities is, we have a good public transport system — but how can we increase walking and cycling without just moving customers away from public transport. The same dilemma but from the opposite angle is currently facing several larger Danish cities: How can you improve the level of public transport without mainly cannibalizing walking and cycling? How can you make sure there is a coherent public transport network across the region, so it, together with walking and cycling taps into the modal share of cars? At the end of the day, there is a limited point in making extensive public transport investments if cars and congestion remain, and people cycling convert to the metro for example.

What do you see as the fundamental challenges facing municipalities in mobility development?

I look at much of the research coming out on self-driving vehicles. This example of an emergent technology is fascinating for cities to deal with. Firstly, we have the situation that we need to make the possibility of self-driving cars work for us, for the good of our city and not the other way around. Cities shouldn’t start to bend their back to cater for the self-driving car as an object in and of itself. In order to understand the value that self-driving cars can bring to the city we first have to question, what is the city of the future that we want? And how does supporting self-driving cars help us achieve that? And further, how does supporting self-driving minibuses, Metros or e-bikes help us achieve that….?

We then see a major challenge in terms of regulation. How does a city regulate a new mobility technology across the regional, city, local levels, all the way down to the algorithm level? This range of regulation, and the interrelation between each level is really complex in the fact that cities may want to support the technology whilst controlling its parameters, all without stifling the industry’s growth and remaining an attractive and progressive looking city. Why is all this important? Because the subsequent development track of, for example automated vehicles, can have huge implications for spatial use in a city, on the intricacies of places, their character and feeling, as well as the very real effects of differential traffic patterns. That’s a tough mix to balance and enforce for a city.

One other point to make here is that we often, by default, frame the city’s future mobility challenges with an understanding that humans act rationally. The ‘economic man’ argument. By providing the best, most integrated, most sustainable mobility options, we assume people will always choose the most efficient mix of travel; scanning the market for the best set of solutions and modal surfing through the city!.. This most likely will not be true for the majority of us.

Humans are creatures of habit, of routine, we don’t always actively choose the most efficient ways of traveling, knowing there are a million interrelated factors influencing mobility decisions.

We know for example how many people love their cars because they can leave all kinds of stuff in them and it provides a personal space where you feel you can pick your nose without anybody watching! So it’s not only the fact that it’s the most convenient transport option for many people, just as we know many people like to cycle because you can sense the different seasons of the year.. So…as the planning discourse becomes ever more multimodal and mobility as a service ever more prominent in the mobility debate we shouldn’t lose focus on the user experience nor all the softer human things that guide our daily mobility patterns and habits.

At Gehl we work with the concept ‘People-First Mobility’. What does this mean and why is it relevant to use this approach considering the points you just mentioned?

When you ask people what type of life you want in a city, very few people would describe sitting in congestion as part of it! Rather, the ability to meet people, to feel free and safe within your city, to walk, to bike, to socialize is almost always part of the conversation, it’s always relevant. This simple question, what type of life do you want? For me, this represents the people-first mobility service. When approaching a mobility task, we don’t begin at the transport system level or even the physical setting of a place, we start with this question, placing the human at the center of our strategic thinking. What type of life do we want?

What mode(s) of transport — and locations of destinations including public spaces — can best support that? And then what kind of street design or transport system does that call for? This, of course, comes from Jan’s original philosophy in asking what life we want in cities, then designing public space to support that life. The same goes here, what life do we want, and what mobility systems and technologies support that vision. This is not a cliché, it is the next level of transport planning.

Without it, we can easily get lost in the technical details and lose that level of coherency that is so crucial to make mobility networks work for their users.

We see huge investments being made in ‘hard’ mobility infrastructure to meet the demands of growing urban populations globally, but what about the ‘soft’ infrastructure? What is soft mobility infrastructure and why is it important?

It’s a good question, but it’s difficult to define the difference between hard and soft infrastructure because we also talk about large and small-scale infrastructure. Where would, for example, Copenhagen’s cycle snake bridge fit? It’s a serious piece of infrastructure but because its dedicated to people cycling it’s perceived as soft in comparison to big infrastructure! Regardless, it is true that we see huge investments in large scale mobility infrastructure; tunnels, bridges, metros etc., and investment in walking and cycling infrastructure is only a fraction in comparison, despite their importance as the glue that binds mobility systems together and as the daily interface between city and citizen, and the fact that they have a very good return on investment compared to most other transport investments. 

I think this comes back to the people-first mobility approach, the placing of the human at the center of our work.

Traditionally, in political, financial and technical terms it is in many ways simpler to plan hard, big scale infrastructure. It’s something we all understand, something we can plan from start to finish, and where we can see an explicit big scale result. The smaller scale solutions, the biking networks for example, may involve hundreds of different interventions across public space. They are incremental, you need a host of different skills across agencies, it requires a different type of interaction with the public, or even a cycling culture to develop over time, it’s softer, and it’s often open ended.

All this complexity is more demanding from a strategic and management perspective. If you’re the city authority how do you measure and follow up on all of these projects towards one strategic goal? There is something in our structures that leans towards big infrastructure to the detriment of focus on the smaller scale, local infrastructure requirements. I’m not saying they are exclusive to one another, but that’s just how it is currently.

There are many ways to address this challenge…one is to make the potential for change and improvements tangible. For example, using tactical urbanism and pilot projects can be very effective in getting the ‘why’ out there; why it’s important to have more biking, walking, and micro mobility solutions — the human scale mobility. People have to feel it and see it to understand the positive impact it can have, and thereby generate support for more of it.