New Mobility
Connectivity, automation, sharing and electric propulsion are enabling seismic change across all aspects of mobility – from the way we commute to how we plan and develop infrastructure for the cities of today and the future.
What are the infrastructure and policy changes that governments should consider in response to these new technologies?
ARTISTA continues to work closely with key players across the world to better understand the potential impact of new mobility on local environments.
Our Ground-Breaking Paper for New Mobility Now: a Practical Guide brings new insights to mobility issues. We consulted with the province and local transportation agencies to determine where they are today and where they want these advancing transportation technologies to enable them to deliver their services in the future.
We carried out extensive interviews with international industry experts and combined these insights with learnings drawn from dozens of our projects. ARTISTA’s team is involved in testing and implementing a multitude of new technologies; working with several of the new business models already in operation.
The opportunity offered by new mobility is significant and highly valuable, particularly for city and area leaders, place makers, transport network owners, and mobility and technology providers.
We offer strategic, technical and operational guidance covering a number of key areas, such as;
New Mobility Will Transform Cities
The introduction of connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technologies and technology -driven mobility services, such as private companies providing new mobility services (e.g., ride-hailing and car-sharing services), presents great opportunities and challenges for everyone.
Connected vehicles – sending and receiving signals from other vehicles, street lights, road sensors, and other devices – will create a safer and better driving experience. When cars can drop off passengers and then make themselves available for other passengers, land currently occupied by parking lots can be repurposed.
A global focus on cleaner cities through electric vehicles will also influence both travel and energy demand when considering the associated charging infrastructure and pricing mechanisms.
Five Strands at the Heart of Today’s Transport and Mobility Change
| Automated Driving | Connected Vehicles Transport Systems and Networks | Electric Vehicles |
| Sometimes described as ‘driverless’ but with many levels of actual automation in practice, automated technologies have been emerging for decades and will increasingly affect all types of light and heavy vehicles. | New and existing forms of connectivity offer the potential for far greater use of safety related features, as well as real-time and off-line information which will benefit those using the network and those who are responsible for its operation and maintenance. | Political support for a move away from internal combustion engines and towards electric vehicles and other future forms of propulsion is gaining momentum around the world as the local and wider air quality impacts of petrol and diesel vehicles are better understood. |
| Shared Use | Business Models | |
| This bundle lies at the heart of place making change and related specifically to vehicle ownership models, and to the extent to which we might be prepared to move towards shared mobility and away from private car ownership. | This element is critical to cost – both actual and perceived – and the ability to create change that will stand the test of time. It requires imaginative, fast and decisive action. |
Policy & Planning
CAVs and new mobility services are becoming increasingly available and they are challenging decades of government policy, as well as the fundamental assumptions of transportation and land-use planning. These technologies and services, and, in particular, the potential of these technologies and services, is creating great uncertainty with regards to future travel demand, travel behaviour, vehicle ownership and the safety and capacity of transportation systems.
One of the key elements in providing efficient transportations systems is that they are space efficient. After prioritizing walking and cycling in cities, this will require simultaneous sharing of vehicles, thus decreasing the current sharp boundaries between private vehicles, taxis and public transit services.
Robust planning strategies can no longer ignore these implications. Through internal and external research and process development, ARTISTA is establishing methods to help agencies proactively develop policies and evaluate scenarios for various advanced technology futures.
Mobility and Freight Pricing
ARTISTA has a designing pricing and regulatory frameworks, from incentivizing the uptake of cleaner vehicles to congestion charging. New mobility services, as represented by mobility as a service, will create multimodal packages of offerings, which will inherently bring new pricing models for transportation and an associated need for public sector response.
The pricing of individual mobility services by private suppliers and the interplay between those and societal incentives and market regulations will together determine what travel choices will be made by individual consumers and on an aggregated level how efficient the transport system will be. Simultaneously, with a need for holistic pricing policies over different modes, it is important to realize that existing policies may not be effective for their intended purpose in the future. Car ownership and fuel taxes, as well as parking charges, may lose their effectiveness. New technology, even in mobility pricing, has a role to play.
Planning & Design
Roadside Infrastructure: We design and specify the roadside infrastructure that enables connectivity between vehicles – V2V & V2I
Telecommunications Expertise: We provide the telecommunications expertise that supports CAV applications and services, including EV charging and payment for services.
Data Management, Warehousing and Integration: We design and operate systems that manage large volumes of data from connected vehicles and translate that data into usable information for transportation management centers and/or agency-specific applications.
Systems Design & integration: We specify, design and integrate the systems that enable connected, autonomous and electric vehicles and services to function – combined with the systems needed for payments and sharing.
Network Operations and Safety
Connected, Autonomous and Ultra Low Emissions Vehicles (ULEVs) all have the potential to disrupt current models for operating road and network operations. Their introduction to transport networks has implications on the safe operation of those networks.
At ARTISTA we have developed models to consider the operational and safety implications of CAV and ULEV on transport networks that enable road authorities to plan for their introduction – by considering the overall system rather than individual elements. The balanced framework approach allows the potential positive and negative impacts of these disruptive technologies to be assessed in an objective manner, considering, for example, how existing infrastructure may need to be adapted or replaced.