New survey shows cities ill prepared to meet the increasing demand for urban mobility. Most of the world’s cities are ill-equipped to cope with the predicted increase in demands on urban travel – that is the stark finding of the second ‘Future of Urban Mobility’ study carried out by global management consultancy Arthur D. Little. Compiled in association with the International Association of Public Transport (UITP), the survey examines and rates urban mobility in 84 cities worldwide against an extended set o
Figure 1: Ranking by regions (Average Points)
New survey shows cities ill prepared to meet the increasing demand for urban mobility.
Most of the world’s cities are ill-equipped to cope with the predicted increase in demands on urban travel – that is the stark finding of the second ‘Future of Urban Mobility’ study carried out by global management consultancy Arthur D. Little. Compiled in association with the3833 International Association of Public Transport (UITP), the survey examines and rates urban mobility in 84 cities worldwide against an extended set of criteria ranging from the financial attractiveness of public transport to the density of vehicles registered.
Put in the context of increasing urbanisation, with 53% of the world’s population currently living in towns and cities, rising to 67% by 2050, along with an expected tripling of urban travel, the report found existing mobility systems are already close to breakdown. In examining factors such as CO2 emissions, NO2 and PM10 concentrations along with the share of zero emissions travel in the modal split, the report also aims to reflect the quality of urban living.
The cities surveyed include 40 megacities in the Climate Leadership Group, 24 of the largest cities in terms of DGP and a further 20 cities showing good practice. The best performing city in each category was given the maximum 100 points and the others marked accordingly with each of the 19 categories weighted to give an overall score out of 100. On this basis the results were poor with an overall global average score of 43.9 points. Star performer was Hong-Kong with 58.2 points followed by Stockholm (57.4 points) and Amsterdam (57.2 points).
Only 11 cities scored more than 52 points meaning the majority of cities achieve less than half of the current potential available through applying best practice across all operations.
“As you would expect some cities score well in certain categories and poorly in others, but no city exhibited best practice in every category,” says Oleksii Korniichuk, manager at Arthur D. Little
The study divided the world into six regions with 26 European cities scoring the highest average at just less than 50 points with a division of mobility with Western Europe averaging 51.5 points while the South and East came in at 45.2. The next highest regions were nine Latin American cities and 28 in Asian Pacific achieved a slightly below average scores at 43.9 and 42.8 points respectively. However, they were still ahead of North America where 13 cities achieved an average score of 39.5 points (see Fig 1).
“Given their orientation toward cars, North American cities rank bottom worldwide for maturity although in terms of performance they were above average overall but show poor results with regard to number of cars per capita and CO2 emissions,” says Korniichuk.
“New York (45.6 points) and Montreal (45.4 points) leads the way in North America while in nine of the European cities we analysed scored above 52 points although divisions are again evident as Athens, Rome and Lisbon all achieved less than 43.
Latin America and Asia-Pacific cities outperformed other regions in public transport related criterion such as financial attractiveness of PT, share of modal split, smart cards to achieve an average of 43.9. Asian Pacific had the broadest spread from overall winner Hong Kong to Hanoi which only scored 30.9 points.”
Africa and the Middle East are the lowest performing regions averaging 37.1 and 34.1 respectively. “While urban mobility systems in these regions perform well in certain criteria due to the lower number of cars, they are still evolving and haven’t reached sufficient maturity yet,” adds Korniichuk.
With 58.2 points Hong Kong emerged as the overall winner and is deemed to offer the world’s most advanced urban mobility – and, as it has the highest population density with more than seven million people packed into a land mass of just 1,100km2, perhaps that is a necessity. Public transport represents 64% of the modal split, every person has an average of 3.1 smart cards and the number of vehicles registered per capita is amongst the lowest in the survey. Despite its population density, Hong Kong has a respectable mean travel time to work, a low rate of traffic-related deaths and a low transport related emissions per capita although it experiences some of the highest NO2 and PM10 concentrations (see Fig 2).
Second place Stockholm was singled out for having one of the best developed cycle path networks in the world, with 4,041km of lanes per 1,000km2, and its traffic-related death rate is amongst the lowest in the survey. It also scores well for transport-related emissions, with one of the lowest concentrations of air-borne nitrogen dioxide, NO2 and PM10 of any city in the world.
There is only one car for every three citizens in Amsterdam (well below the Western European average of 0.45 vehicles per capita) and cycling has a high share of the modal split (33%) with a dense cycling lanes network occupying 3,502km per 1,000km2. At 844kg per capita per annum, transport-related CO2 emissions in Amsterdam are below the Western European average of 1,330kg per annum but public transport only has an 8% share of the modal split.
This latest survey highlights the progress of shared mobility – increasing from an average of 89 shared cars per million citizens in the 2011 report (covering 66 cities) to 115 cars per million two years later. The story is similar when it comes to bike use - increasing from 344 shared bikes per million citizens to 383. Korniichuk thinks this trend is set to continue, saying: “More cars and bikes are being shared in cities, both via peer-to-peer and business-to-consumer models, but many of those concepts haven’t yet managed to take off as providers are still testing different business models.”
Smartcard use has also shown a pronounced increase with an average penetration of 0.34 cards per capita in 2011 growing 14% pa to 0.44 in 2013. On a like-for-like basis in 66 cities, smartcard penetration was up +21% p.a. “Most of this growth is being driven by developing cities such as Dubai, Buenos Aires, Delhi, Kuala Lumpur and Tehran while in developed cities smartcard penetration is stagnating,” observes Korniichuk.
In their analysis of the results the authors identify three business model archetypes: Apple, Amazon and Dell. ‘Apple’ companies integrate a number of their own mobility solutions while ‘Amazon’ companies aggregate third-party services. Those labelled ‘Dell’ are single mode specialists.
“There are plenty of solutions and business models available, but very few transport system operators have managed to smartly integrate them to unleash their full business potential,” says François-Joseph Van Audenhove, partner at Arthur D. Little.
Suggested ways forward for cities with a high proportion of cars or powered two-wheelers is to become more public transport and sustainability oriented while those with a high share of sustainable transport modes already should foster fully integrated seamless multimodal travel. This should include ‘one face to the customer’ and increasing attractiveness of public transport by service extension.
Cities with partly underdeveloped mobility systems should aim to avoid replicating the mistakes made by developed countries and establish a sustainable mobility core to satisfy short-term demand at a reasonable cost. “These cities have access to emerging transport infrastructure and technologies and the opportunity to become testbeds and breeding grounds for tomorrow’s urban mobility systems,” says Van Audenhove.
So what would a city that performs well across all criteria look like? According to the authors it would have a best-in-class urban mobility system as affordable as Hong Kong, with a similar vehicle density, modal split and level of smart-card acceptance. It would also have Stockholm’s clean air, as much cycling as Amsterdam and be as safe Copenhagen. Public transport service would be as frequent as the London Tube combined with a bike sharing system from Brussels or Paris and Stuttgart’s car sharing scheme. Travel times would be as short as Nantes and its climatic impact would be as small as that of Wuhan.
Most of the world’s cities are ill-equipped to cope with the predicted increase in demands on urban travel – that is the stark finding of the second ‘Future of Urban Mobility’ study carried out by global management consultancy Arthur D. Little. Compiled in association with the
Put in the context of increasing urbanisation, with 53% of the world’s population currently living in towns and cities, rising to 67% by 2050, along with an expected tripling of urban travel, the report found existing mobility systems are already close to breakdown. In examining factors such as CO2 emissions, NO2 and PM10 concentrations along with the share of zero emissions travel in the modal split, the report also aims to reflect the quality of urban living.
The cities surveyed include 40 megacities in the Climate Leadership Group, 24 of the largest cities in terms of DGP and a further 20 cities showing good practice. The best performing city in each category was given the maximum 100 points and the others marked accordingly with each of the 19 categories weighted to give an overall score out of 100. On this basis the results were poor with an overall global average score of 43.9 points. Star performer was Hong-Kong with 58.2 points followed by Stockholm (57.4 points) and Amsterdam (57.2 points).
Only 11 cities scored more than 52 points meaning the majority of cities achieve less than half of the current potential available through applying best practice across all operations.
“As you would expect some cities score well in certain categories and poorly in others, but no city exhibited best practice in every category,” says Oleksii Korniichuk, manager at Arthur D. Little
The study divided the world into six regions with 26 European cities scoring the highest average at just less than 50 points with a division of mobility with Western Europe averaging 51.5 points while the South and East came in at 45.2. The next highest regions were nine Latin American cities and 28 in Asian Pacific achieved a slightly below average scores at 43.9 and 42.8 points respectively. However, they were still ahead of North America where 13 cities achieved an average score of 39.5 points (see Fig 1).
“Given their orientation toward cars, North American cities rank bottom worldwide for maturity although in terms of performance they were above average overall but show poor results with regard to number of cars per capita and CO2 emissions,” says Korniichuk.
“New York (45.6 points) and Montreal (45.4 points) leads the way in North America while in nine of the European cities we analysed scored above 52 points although divisions are again evident as Athens, Rome and Lisbon all achieved less than 43.
Latin America and Asia-Pacific cities outperformed other regions in public transport related criterion such as financial attractiveness of PT, share of modal split, smart cards to achieve an average of 43.9. Asian Pacific had the broadest spread from overall winner Hong Kong to Hanoi which only scored 30.9 points.”
Africa and the Middle East are the lowest performing regions averaging 37.1 and 34.1 respectively. “While urban mobility systems in these regions perform well in certain criteria due to the lower number of cars, they are still evolving and haven’t reached sufficient maturity yet,” adds Korniichuk.
With 58.2 points Hong Kong emerged as the overall winner and is deemed to offer the world’s most advanced urban mobility – and, as it has the highest population density with more than seven million people packed into a land mass of just 1,100km2, perhaps that is a necessity. Public transport represents 64% of the modal split, every person has an average of 3.1 smart cards and the number of vehicles registered per capita is amongst the lowest in the survey. Despite its population density, Hong Kong has a respectable mean travel time to work, a low rate of traffic-related deaths and a low transport related emissions per capita although it experiences some of the highest NO2 and PM10 concentrations (see Fig 2).
Second place Stockholm was singled out for having one of the best developed cycle path networks in the world, with 4,041km of lanes per 1,000km2, and its traffic-related death rate is amongst the lowest in the survey. It also scores well for transport-related emissions, with one of the lowest concentrations of air-borne nitrogen dioxide, NO2 and PM10 of any city in the world.
There is only one car for every three citizens in Amsterdam (well below the Western European average of 0.45 vehicles per capita) and cycling has a high share of the modal split (33%) with a dense cycling lanes network occupying 3,502km per 1,000km2. At 844kg per capita per annum, transport-related CO2 emissions in Amsterdam are below the Western European average of 1,330kg per annum but public transport only has an 8% share of the modal split.
This latest survey highlights the progress of shared mobility – increasing from an average of 89 shared cars per million citizens in the 2011 report (covering 66 cities) to 115 cars per million two years later. The story is similar when it comes to bike use - increasing from 344 shared bikes per million citizens to 383. Korniichuk thinks this trend is set to continue, saying: “More cars and bikes are being shared in cities, both via peer-to-peer and business-to-consumer models, but many of those concepts haven’t yet managed to take off as providers are still testing different business models.”
Smartcard use has also shown a pronounced increase with an average penetration of 0.34 cards per capita in 2011 growing 14% pa to 0.44 in 2013. On a like-for-like basis in 66 cities, smartcard penetration was up +21% p.a. “Most of this growth is being driven by developing cities such as Dubai, Buenos Aires, Delhi, Kuala Lumpur and Tehran while in developed cities smartcard penetration is stagnating,” observes Korniichuk.
In their analysis of the results the authors identify three business model archetypes: Apple, Amazon and Dell. ‘Apple’ companies integrate a number of their own mobility solutions while ‘Amazon’ companies aggregate third-party services. Those labelled ‘Dell’ are single mode specialists.
“There are plenty of solutions and business models available, but very few transport system operators have managed to smartly integrate them to unleash their full business potential,” says François-Joseph Van Audenhove, partner at Arthur D. Little.
Suggested ways forward for cities with a high proportion of cars or powered two-wheelers is to become more public transport and sustainability oriented while those with a high share of sustainable transport modes already should foster fully integrated seamless multimodal travel. This should include ‘one face to the customer’ and increasing attractiveness of public transport by service extension.
Cities with partly underdeveloped mobility systems should aim to avoid replicating the mistakes made by developed countries and establish a sustainable mobility core to satisfy short-term demand at a reasonable cost. “These cities have access to emerging transport infrastructure and technologies and the opportunity to become testbeds and breeding grounds for tomorrow’s urban mobility systems,” says Van Audenhove.
So what would a city that performs well across all criteria look like? According to the authors it would have a best-in-class urban mobility system as affordable as Hong Kong, with a similar vehicle density, modal split and level of smart-card acceptance. It would also have Stockholm’s clean air, as much cycling as Amsterdam and be as safe Copenhagen. Public transport service would be as frequent as the London Tube combined with a bike sharing system from Brussels or Paris and Stuttgart’s car sharing scheme. Travel times would be as short as Nantes and its climatic impact would be as small as that of Wuhan.
