To Share or Not? A Critical View on Personal Mobility

Abstract

In their book Reinventing the Automobile, William Mitchell, Chris Borroni-Bird, and Larry Burns unravel a fascinating vision for technologically driven, shared, on-demand, mobility systems. Today, shared mobility-on-demand systems are one of the most rapidly growing sectors of urban transport, yet, the average shared vehicle is often as inefficient as a privately owned one. In this essay, I argue that the question of sharing versus owning is one that depends less on planning, technology, and operations, as the authors of the book suggest, and more on contextual factors such as urban form, land use distribution, and user behaviour. I organize my argument in three parts. First, I provide a definition of cost of shared mobility that serves as a basis for comparing shared with privately owned mobility. Next, I critique three common arguments in support of mobility-on-demand systems. Finally, I frame the question of sharing versus owning in a generalized yet addressable manner and I suggest new methodological directions to address it.

Keywords:

• shared mobility
• intelligent transportation
• common pool resources
• bike-sharing
• mobility-on-demand
• smart cities
• autonomous vehicles
• urban dynamics

Notes

Notes

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dimitris Papanikolaou

Dimitris Papanikolaou, DDes, is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), jointly between the School of Architecture and the Department of Software and Information Systems, and he is the director of the Urban Synergetics Lab at UNCC. His research investigates the relationship between urban space, information technology and social behavior, from a system dynamics perspective. Dr Papanikolaou holds a Doctor of Design (DDes) from Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, an MSc in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, a SMArchS in Design Computation from MIT, School of Architecture and Planning, and a Diploma in Architectural Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece.