Bringing together New Thinking and Data for the Future of Mobility
The days of lugging around heavy bags of shopping in the high street could soon be over, say bosses behind innovative new proposals.
Their scheme would allow visitors to Canterbury to leave their purchases in-store – and have them delivered to their homes or hotels later.
The ‘You Shop, We Drop’ service will be free for customers – within a five-mile radius of the city centre – and participating shops during a trial period.
WORK has started on a project that could see the introduction of a green, last-mile delivery service in Stratford with the aim of cutting vehicle emissions.
If successful, delivery companies would stop at a hub on the outskirts of town to unload and goods would then be taken to homes and businesses by electric vehicles or possibly cargo bikes.
Entitled Project Damascus, the initial feasibility research, which is being funded by the government’s Geospatial Commission, will focus on consolidating the deliveries from 16 national companies.
The project is being led by the TravelSpirit Foundation and is supported by Stratford Climate Action and Stratford Town Council.
With the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating a trend towards home-working and online shopping, in excess of 2.5 billion parcels were delivered across the UK over 2020. 25% of the UK population stating that they will now continue with their new online shopping behaviour, even when things return to normal.
Therefore, e-commerce and home deliveries are set to continue to grow beyond a current 30% share of total retail expenditure. At the same time, the customer experience of delivery services can be below our expectations, and not as convenient as we thought. Some are also debating whether online shopping is a ‘greener’ choice than driving to the shops.
For this reason, the UK Government Cabinet Office Geospatial Commission has funded a research study to understand the opportunity to create an integrated local mobility hub for parcel and food deliveries in market towns, such as Whitstable, Canterbury, Stratford-upon-Avon, Leighton Buzzard and Buxton.
A proposed hub for each town would be served by a fleet of electric vans and electrically powered bicycles designed for couriers (known as e-cargo bikes) and enable a more efficient system for organising the deliveries of goods to your home. This could include goods you have ordered online, by telephone, or in-store for home delivery.
In practice this would require national parcel carrier firms to drop off their parcels at the hub, for automatic sorting and assignment to local courier delivery schedules. It is hoped that home deliveries can be arranged in a way that generates less pollution, reduced traffic and improves the experience of consumers and suppliers alike.
To achieve this, TravelSpirit and Iconic Blockchain have combined forces, under ‘Damascus Mile’ to research both the technology and real-world impact opportunities for fusing blockchain and Galileo satellite technologies together to allow the parcels to be tracked and consolidated in a secure, transparent and auditable way.
Blockchain technology and its Smart Contract capabilities is already well- established as a promising solution for governments and the supply-chain; to enable shared business processes that require high levels of trust, transparency and accountability. This includes major government backed programs by the EU, US, India and China.
The Galileo program is Europe’s initiative for a state-of-the-art global satellite navigation system (GNSS), providing a highly accurate, guaranteed global positioning service under civilian control and the first to offer authenticated navigation messages to all civilian users in the world. The program also provides higher levels of accuracy and authentication for commercial applications.
To research and validate the business and operational model for the local hub and deliveries, Stratford-upon-Avon Town Council and Canterbury City Council have lent their support to act as case-studies for the research, as part of their wider agenda’s to develop net-zero carbon plans.
Janet Godsell, Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Strategy at WMG University of Warwick is providing expert advice to the project. She said “This is an important piece of research. It has strong alignment with the government’s Green Industrial Revolution strategy and could have a widespread positive impact on many UK towns outside the larger metropolitan cities.”
Stratford and Canterbury will also be the focus of our ‘user research’, to better understand the needs and service value propositions for residents and businesses receiving the parcels, local courier drivers and retailers offering a home delivery option to their customers.
New and innovative approaches are needed to overcome the barriers to engaging people in physical and leisure activity after stroke. Outdoor cycling, including the use of adapted or electric bicycles, may be one approach. However, perceptions of stroke survivors on this topic have not yet been explored.
To explore a sample of stroke survivors’ perspectives, who expressed an interest in cycling, about cycling and the use of electric bicycles, data was collected from 21 stroke survivors, seven of whom were current cyclists.
Our Whitepaper, authored by the University of Central Lancashire, and in full support of the work of our community member, Disability Cycling Charity EMpowered people, concludes that outdoor cycling may be a worthwhile approach to increasing physical and leisure activity after stroke. However, barriers still exist and need to be addressed to provide inclusive opportunities for adapted and electric cycling for stroke survivors.
EMpowered people is a registered charity and a member of the TravelSpirit community. Their aim is to enable all adults with disabilities, from all backgrounds, to improve their health and wellbeing through cycling.
This Whitepaper is the outcome of an Industrial Call for Collaborative Research, initiated by TravelSpirit’s Electric Bike Research Executive (EBRE), via the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Infrastructure (NOCRI).
Read more about the Electric Bike Research Executive (EBRE)
ITS America have partnered with the TravelSpirit Foundation on an event in Los Angeles, as a joint action to both promote the MOD Alliance program and to further embed the principles of openness, in particular data-sharing, into city mobility eco-systems.
Cities, regions and states use mobility data to manage their transportation system to reduce congestion, improve mobility, and enable greater accessibility to mobility choices. Private mobility and transportation information providers rely on data to provide services to their customers, power fleets and continue to grow the mobility marketplace.
The influx of new mobility on demand choices have resulted in large amounts of data being generated, some of which has begun to flow between the private companies and cities/regions/states.
The event has been designed to drive a larger discussion on data sharing in all forms of Mobility on Demand, including micro-transit, micro-mobility and city-wide data systems.
Featuring a series of keynote speakers including Laura Bliss from Citylab, Seleta Reynolds from LA DOT and Jascha Franklin-Hodge from Open Mobility Foundation, policy discussions and Data Demonstration Talks, these interactive sessions will build on takeaways from the previous ITS America Data Series and TravelSpirit Conference and Community Design Workshop events, to discuss road forward with the public and private sector as we prepare for the new scale of data sharing, access and utilization.
To attend please register at the MOD Alliance website.
Preparing cities for the necessary transformation and organisational changes needed for an open future
In the midst of the uncertainty surrounding Brexit, the UK’s TravelSpirit Foundation Executive team organised an Open Mobility Conference in Brussels, April 2019, to spearhead long overdue public and corporate policy developments for a new open paradigm for city transportation.
As a follow-up action to the conference, this white paper establishes TravelSpirit’s global position around openness in mobility, and the impact this could have on shaping the new mobility frontier.
In this paper, we place emphasis on drawing upon voices from diverse aspects of our city transport ecosystem, with the key purpose of encouraging further debate, and a call to action for building an open eco-system, open protocols and developing a global strategy for openness in cities.
After the Open Mobility Conference TravelSpirit publishes city and industry case studies to facilitate open collaborative mobility.
Use the link below or #Open Mobility to navigate the case studies.
Why publish these now?
Technology already exists to make it possible for people to have a single transport account enabling them to use the train, hire an e-scooter, access a self-driving pod, book travel insurance and take a flight. However, the reality is that we’re not seeing this happening on any kind of scale in the world today.
Last month, TravelSpirit and MaaS Alliance hosted a conference on Open Mobility at KANAL, a former Citroën car factory turned art gallery, in a regeneration zone of Brussels. It was an exciting event that brought together diverse voices in the mobility sphere – from Amsterdam City Authorities to International Air Transport Association, IATA, investment fund SGInnovate, and Porsche. But the simple message was that whilst technology exists that can enable a truly simple, open and seamless multi-modal transport – the mobility as a service that could replace the personal car – it will only reach its potential if the industry becomes much more open and collaborative.
TravelSpirit believes that business models will need to become much more collaborative – with a diverse mix of operators including automakers, bus companies, taxis, bike share and trains working more closely with cities so that the best use of our streets is determined by the public interest, not the most aggressive business model or the one with the deepest pockets.
“Currently we are seeing that, at one end of the spectrum, some companies are calling for new thinking from policy makers and corporate leaders – with businesses like Europcar looking forward to a completely open transport system, or “mobility as a service” bringing economic benefits to cities in a sustainable way. Whilst at the other, some companies work in silos, annexing their part of people’s journeys or attempting to keep them within their service group for multimodal trips.” According to TravelSpirit Chairman, Simon Herko.
“At the broadest level, we have been debating how to restructure the entire transport industry, to become a lot more “open” in its approach to satisfying growing consumer expectations for transport options that are more flexible, easy to consume and that can be bundled into a single customer offer or subscription-based service.
This involves traditional transport companies being prepared to open-up to competition and accept they don’t own the complete customer journey and/or travel requirements of a customer over the course of a year. It also requires industry silos such as airline, public transport, tech platforms, to better interface and collaborate with each other for the benefit of the customer.
This is a controversial stand-point, given the context of existing automotive firms and public transport companies feeling threatened by the new tech-platforms (aka Uber, Mobike, Google etc etc) and the implied “winner takes all” race that is being foreseen as we move into an autonomous vehicle future.”
At TravelSpirit, we believe that we need to reconfigure the transport space. An ‘if it uses public roads (and rails) it should be open’ attitude would go some way to developing open mobility. But cities too need to be able to see how the roads (and often rails) they build and maintain are used. Mobility providers need to share usage data with cities in return for public authorities to be sure that the infrastructure they provide is being used efficiently and beneficially.
It’s a drawn out process, with many stages and patchy adoption. The important lesson is that cities, public authorities, private innovators and transport operators all need to share their experience. This is a complex transition which will require collaboration and negotiation. The more information and case studies we have to inform the debate the better.
Case studies from the Open Mobility Conference here:
Cities for Open Mobility: Singapore – investment and innovation
Cities for Open Mobility: Antwerp – the open ecosystem
Cities for Open Mobility: London – open live transport data
Cities for Open Mobility: Los Angeles – data for access and the MDS
Cities for Open Mobility: Helsinki – the open data law
Standards for Open Mobility: New Distribution Capability
Standards for Open Mobility: Minimum Interoperability Mechanisms
Companies for Open Mobility: Europcar
Singapore is an island city state with a population of over 5.5 million. The authorities are already able to control vehicle ownership through vehicle licensing (car ownership requires a ‘certificate of entitlement’) and road pricing – and the city places an emphasis on its integrated public transport network with simple payment system.
However, besides this the state has also opted to develop an investment based approach – creating an investment fund, SGInnovate, a private limited company wholly owned by the Singapore Government, which seeks out transformational technologies and provides equity-based investments, access to talent and support in building customer traction.
SGInnovate believes that Singapore has all the resources and capabilities needed to tackle ‘hard problems’ that matter to people around the world. As part of its Deep Tech Nexus Strategy, it is focused on adding tangible value to the Singapore deep tech startup ecosystem in two key areas – development of Human Capital and deployment of Investment Capital. With the support of partners and co-investors, SGInnovate backs deeply technical founders through equity-based investments, access to talent, and support in building customer traction. These efforts are prioritised around transformational technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and MedTech, which represent impactful and scalable answers to global challenges.
This gives the city a stake in TRANStech – both through the regulation of transport and also in the development of next generation mobility – gaining both capital returns and social returns.
The Belgian city of Antwerp is a historical city located at the river Scheldt in the north of the country. Due to its port and diamond trade it is the commercial heart of both Belgium and the Flemish region, hosting about 80.000 companies. It is home to 520,000 inhabitants, and boasts one of the most congested ring roads in the TEN-T European network, resulting in a huge impact on the city and its economy.
Antwerp has a radical investment plan to tackle extreme congestion with a masterplan with a dual approach of investing in both infrastructure projects (and one of the most ambitious set of public works Europe has seen in decades) and behaviour change simultaneously.
According to the Vice-Mayor, Koen Kennis, speaking at the Open Mobility Conference event “Antwerp is a ‘living lab’ for smart ideas on mobility of individuals, but also for logistical and maritime challenges. As a city we reach out to all innovators working in this field. We are very excited to support calls for a new Open Ecosystem approach for transportation. This will open up the market for all mobility services all over the world and will break some local monopoly control. This means decoupling services (taxis, scooters, etc.) from their individual apps. It means creating new market opportunities for mobility providers to enter underserved markets.”
London has pioneered simple, account based travel through Oyster, and stimulated innovation by providing live data feeds for the transport it provides. The open data approach has stimulated a great deal of third party innovation using Transport for London’s transport feeds.
This has enabled start-ups like CityMapper to create sophisticated route planners able to compare costs, times and active travel metrics with real time information. Some – like CityMapper have incorporated both TfL data and third party APIs (like Uber, Zipcar and Gett).
Whilst Uber is now including public transport information using TfL open data in its app, Citymapper has added its own transport provision (which have included a bus route and a shared taxi service) as an option within its app. In addition it’s partnered with Mastercard to incorporate more services into one (subscription based) payment system than are currently included on Oyster.
Whilst the provision of public transport in London is highly regulated with a single system providing buses, underground metro and local rail to travellers (competition is for franchises to provide the service rather than at the customer interface), this enables the innovation at the data and platform level.
There are questions about new services however, with TfL responsible for roads but not fully able to regulate private hire and ride hailing. Currently the data provision is one way – with apps and new mobility providers not providing insight to TfL.