Toward an intelligent mobility regime

Potter, Stephen; Warren, James; Valdez, Miguel and Cook, Matthew (2023). Toward an intelligent mobility regime. In: Droege, Peter ed. Intelligent Environments: advanced systems for a healthy planet, 2nd Edition. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 323–350.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-820247-0.00020-5

Abstract

This chapter adopts a framework based on the Multi-level Perspective . It begins by exploring the socio-economic factors behind personal transport trends. The chapter then moves to the level of the socio-technical regime to discuss transport policy and planning, arguing that the way in which this operates lags behind the shifts in the mobility forming factors and behaviours of the socio-technical landscape. This analysis shows that current transport policy is attuned to the requirements of a past landscape, and this conceptualisation is embedded in obdurate transport planning structures, approaches and professional skills. Intelligent environment developments are thus applied in a 20th century manner that consigns digital mobility thinking and practices to a subsidiary supporting role (such as information and booking apps or a ‘last mile’ add on to existing public transport systems). The transformative potential of intelligent mobility is being bottled up within a late 20th century mindset, practices and institutional structures.

To explore the practical implications of this misalignment for intelligent mobility developments, the chapter focuses on a case study of the design of the public transport system, examining the different ways in which intelligent mobility technologies are being applied. These are structured into a four-category typology. Some of these applications (types 1 and 2) assign intelligent mobility technologies to a supplementary supporting role for the existing regime (augmenting existing transport policy regime approaches), whereas others (types 3 and 4) represent a potential regime transformation approach. The chapter ends by exploring how practitioners can mould new technology trials and niche experiments to lead toward greater transformative impacts. It concludes that the transport policy regime needs to align to the 21st century socio-technical landscape and the emergence of intelligent mobility technologies could develop such a transformation.

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