Gemini survey results on New Mobility Services are in!
Image by Photo by Stéphane Mingot on Unsplash
In order to design innovative business models and thereby shape the future of shared mobility services, GEMINI partner Universidad Politecnica de Madrid launched an online survey between September 27 and October 26, 2023 to collect information on technological drivers and key societal goals.
The target stakeholders were government and regulatory bodies, infrastructure managers and providers, mobility operators, ancillary services linked to mobility services, investors, financial institutions and insurance, researchers, think tanks, consultancy firms, transport and user associations, urban planners, and smart city initiatives.
A total of 280 survey responses were received, of which 195 were complete and valid.
When it comes to the repondents themselves, 61% did not belong to GEMINI and the most common categories of work associated with these were government and regulation bodies (53%) and research and academia (41%). Furthermore, 59% of respondents considered themselves experts in New Mobility Services (NMS), while 23% did not.
With regard to NMS, 3% of respondents stated that they use NMS on a daily basis, 45% at least once per month, and 55% rarely or just every once in a while.
More specifically, the most widely used type of NMS by respondents was micro-mobility, with bike sharing (51%) topping the list, and followed by kick scooter sharing (18%), and moped scooter sharing (11%). Car sharing was also widely used (41%), while ride-hailing and ridesharing services were indicated as also used but to a lesser extent.
Moreover, the following key points emerged from the survey responses:
- The most important economic-related goals for society that were selected were “keeping prices of essential services at an affordable level“, “financial sustainability to government and businesses” and “resiliency“. On the other hand, concerning the potential contributions of NMS to promote key economic-related goals, the “promotion of innovation” and “productivity gains from reducing congestion” were considered the most important ones.
- The most important social-related goals for the society were “better use of public space in cities”, “safety and security”, “accessibility for people with reduced mobility” and “accessibility and proximity to goods and services”. On the other hand, the key goals that were found to be the least important by respondents were “quality Jobs” and “gender equality“. With regard to the potential contributions of NMS to promote key social-related goals, respondents selected “better use of public space in the cities” and “accessibility and proximity to good and services” as most important, while “quality jobs” and “gender equality“ were again ranked to be least important among the list of options.
- As far as environmental-related goals for society were concerned, respondents considered “air quality in cities” and “mitigation of climate change” as being the most important ones. In line with this, respondents also selected “air quality in cities” and “mitigation of climate change” as the goals that NMS can help improve them most when asked to think about the potential contributions of NMS to promote key environmental-related goals.
- Regarding the governance-related goals, all of the listed goals (i.e. legal certainity, institutional quality, transparency, justice, democracy) were considered important for the successful implementation of NMS. The highest scores, however, were given to “legal certainty” and “institutional quality“, which was expecte as they are paramount to reducing the risk related to NMS implementation.
Moreover, a part of the survey was dedicated to the potential of new technologies and how they may benefit and enhance aspects necessary for the right implementation of NMS.
When asked asked about the potential that different technology enablers are expected to have in the transformation of the current global mobility landscape, respondents selected “physical and ICT infrastructure” as having the highest potential.
It is worth noting that, contrary to what might initially be expected, “alternative power and energy solutions” and “data security and management” were not considered to be important by respondents.
Survey results further pointed out that the emerging technologies that have the greatest potential to drive NMS innovation are “advanced fleet monitoring and management solutions“, “IoT infrastructure and smart cities“, “big data, AI and machine learning techniques” and “connected, cooperative and autonomous vehicles“. Respondents considered that new technologies can contribute most to improving “modal integration“, “user experience, customer satisfaction, and quality of service“, and “accessibility and proximity of transport services to people”.
Moreover, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) was selected as the NMS that can benefit the most from innovative technologies. MaaS refers to the integration of services that enables access of different modes of transportation in an integrated manner.
In addition, services such as mobility hubs that facilitate integration between different modes and on-demand micro transit were selected as having a high potential to benefit from technological innovations. It is worth noting that these two NMS were among those with the lowest level of use reported by respondents; thus, new technologies can be crucial to boost their use in the next few years.
Respondents considered “regulatory hurdles” as the main challenge to promoting the integration of technical innovations into NMS. It should be noted that this is aligned with what respondents selected as the most important governance goal for the proper implementation of NMS, namely “legal certainty“. It is, therefore, considered one of the key aspects to work on for promoting and guaranteeing the suitable operation of NMS. The second most selected challenge was “infrastructure availability“.
In conclusion, by collecting key information from different actors regarding technological drivers and key societal goals, the survey was able to provide a useful overview for the design of innovative business models for shared mobility.
Author: GEMINI Project Dissemination Manager
