Urban Mobility Design

India

Preface

Graham Currie, Director Public Transport Research Group, Institute of Transport Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

I am often amazed at the diverse languages, views and even ways of thinking which comprise our understanding of mobility planning in cities; from the ‘Mars’ of the engineer/technologist to the ‘Venus’ of the urban designer, planner and sociologist; it often seems there are more differences than similarities in our comprehension of urban mobility. These tensions are the basis of much conflict, disjointed planning and lack of progress in the coordinated development of cities. Add to this the tsunami of global urbanisation, climate change and increasing traffic congestion combined with the disruptive revolutions expected in transport technology and what humanity has is quite simply a very big problem.

This book represents a new frontier in our understanding of the future of urban mobility using an entirely original but highly appropriate perspective, from the interpretation of the humans who travel. It adopts ‘design thinking’; the flexible use of logic, imagination and systematic reasoning, to explore a diverse range of topics from the passenger’s position. That this book is the first to take this perspective is most impressive. What is also amazing is that little literature has explored the human approach to design in relation to urban mobility. Certainly, human-centred design has been a fundamental feature of vehicle development, from ergonomics to product conceptualisation, production and marketing. But why not use design thinking for all aspects of mobility planning and implementation? Does consideration of human-centred design have to cease at the human–machine interface? Why can’t this approach go beyond this? These are the questions addressed in this book which takes a human-centred design perspective on chapters considering new forms of energy in transport, driverless vehicles, universal accessibility, the passenger experience, new approaches to manufacturing and design in the context of future mobility.

As human life on planet earth is increasingly an urban domain, integrated inclusive thinking is required to develop solutions to improve the passenger experience of travel in future cities. Design thinking is a new a powerful tool to both understand and mitigate urban mobility challenges to enhance urban mobility quality and the social, economic and environmental performance of our cities into the 21st century.

Chapter 1

Introduction – Urban Mobility Design

Abstract

Profound changes in society, such as types of energy, city densification, automated technology and progressive social inclusion, are impacting upon the traditional forms of urban mobility. Much existing land transport infrastructure – trains, buses, personal transport – is predicated upon old frameworks and patterns of use, such as cars facilitating suburban sprawl, vehicular shapes and forms built around the internal combustion engine, inaccessible public transport to persons of reduced mobility and transport planning dogma that sees moving from one place to another as a ‘dis-utility’. While Design has always been a key arbiter of the visual expression of mobility, especially in the automotive industry as a driver of style and personal aspiration, public transport on the other hand has for the much part been hitherto relegated to dry unappealing bland functionality. The book takes the reader through the emerging landscape of urban mobility design and examines how design is addressing the issues surrounding driverless vehicles, share systems, universal access, ubiquitous information and user experience among other ‘disrupters’. This work reflects current research but also sets the agenda for future speculations in the field.

Keywords

Design; Mobility; Urban; Disruptors

Chapter Outline

Genesis

New Technology and New Form

Autonomy

Accessibility

User Experience

New Ways of Making

Creating the Future of Mobility

References

Further Reading

On a typical day, among the thousands of commuters in Melbourne, Australia, there are three co-workers heading towards the same office. Their destination is as common as their journeys are different. The first rises early for a fast rail journey into Melbourne from a regional city more than 100 km away. This commute involves walking, regional and metro rail and bus. The second walks a very short distance from an inner-city apartment to a busy railway station, boarding one of the frequent services there for a journey of around 10 km, and alights only 15 min later. At around the same time, our third colleague gets astride a bicycle in one of Melbourne's suburbs for a 23-km bike ride to the front door of the building. In the process of getting to work, these three commuters, your authors, have very different mobility experiences. These journeys have been planned and orchestrated by them and guided by the intentions of professional transport planning. However, the experiences of their particular journeys have been formed by the objects and landscapes, the physical interactions with the objects of conveyance, comfort, amenity, activity and even their appetites for human contact. The very design of trains, bikes, buses and their infrastructure shape passenger experience, be it pleasant or otherwise.

The ability of your three authors to make their journeys in the first place is founded in the principles of transport planning. Integrating a variety of different disciplines around the goal of keeping everyone moving, transport planning responds to a system of inputs and outputs. However, people are also emotional, habitual beings with feelings shaped by an accumulated life experience that is constantly unfolding. Design is the detail that taps into human motivations and aspirations while people are on their journeys. It is a quality that engenders happiness and delight, as well as alienation and aggression if done badly. Design is cultural, marking out identity and community. It is the lifeblood of the transport system, influencing human behaviours and guiding travel demand. In this book, our three commuters examine the key mobility issues of our time through the lens of design. Clearly, while engineering plays a role in the provision of mobility, it is a necessary yet not sufficient endeavour if we are seeking an ideal state. We assert that there are necessary and sufficient elements that need to exist to create good mobility. Many of the major mobility challenges that confront us will only be met if both the necessary elements that engineering bring are teamed with the sufficient ones of design. By design we mean design approaches in both thinking skills and physical embodiment.

Billions of people all over the globe every day in pursuit of their livelihood, shopping, education or leisure, among many more reasons, either enjoy or despair in the manner of their getting anywhere. Our ability to overcome the limitations of our spatial and temporal boundaries has been a triumph of human ingenuity. Most of what we take for granted as mobility, beyond human and animal muscle, has only arisen in the last two centuries. Technologies emerge, reach maturity and are refined through increasingly nuanced and sophisticated design. Design goes beyond the object and embraces the wider mobility sphere, from the traditional base of designing vehicles to now designing whole experiences.

It is this position – the ability of design to shape mobility – that this book describes. The word design is used here to describe a broad family of processes applied in various ways to various tasks. Design can be used to figure something out, as a mindset for research and as an applied tool used to create things that respond to the physical and cultural worlds we find ourselves in. Design is not a single methodology but, rather, a family of them, providing ways of carrying out activities towards some end goal. It is particularly useful if such a goal is unknown or elusive; indeed, often we see design's agency in bringing together other disciplines in a cohesive effort or in solving a wicked problem. In this book we advocate that design is the appropriate tool to bring together knowledge in order to answer some of mobility's thorny questions. How, for example, will the philosophy of designing desire into cars change in a transport economy that is driverless and shared? In a driverless future, what will intersections look like if we no longer need traffic lights? How will our experience of commuting change when we gain the ability to be productive in transit rather than passively staring out of the window? Are we moving from a view of time in transit as a disutility to it becoming an amenity? This narrative examines the contemporary disruptors that are changing the mobility landscape, from emerging sources of motive power to the connectivity that is leading us to driverless roads, accessible and age-friendly cities where passenger experiences are in the ascendancy, all built in a completely new post-industrial world. In all these spaces, design is the mediator and interpreter between people and the manner in which they travel (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1 The position of design in emergent technology.

Genesis

As a starting point, let us consider where mobility as we know it today may have come from. At the turn of the 19th century, most people did not live in cities. The wider population was engaged in agrarian employment and would not have expected to travel far beyond the homes in which they were born; indeed, most populations lived and died in the same vicinity (Newby, 1987). The only way to get around on land was by foot or hoof. Walking underpins mobility in many ways. In a historical sense, walking and running were the entire scope of mobility for many thousands of years. In a contemporary setting, walking is still the most appropriate mode for the majority of journeys, and the myriad staircases, ramps, tunnels and signposts evidence how walking fills in the gaps between the more complex human inventions that enable mobility beyond our body. The choice to walk is a ‘design’: the agency of the individual. To walk is to be engaged with our surroundings and to participate in those surroundings in a very direct way. As the scene gradually shifts and our perspective reveals new sights, smells and sounds, we are engaging with the very essence of mobility – experiencing the space between our origin and our destination to the fullest extent possible (Jacks, 2006).

What motivation might have existed during the genesis of mechanically aided mobility? For a nomadic culture, mobility would be a concept so ingrained as to be invisible. To be nomadic is to facilitate survival in the context of what is available from the ecosystem; when food is scarce, move on to where it is not. The evolution and development of an agrarian society gradually gave rise to the notion of a largely sedentary community. The movement of people became more predicated upon the movement of goods for trade. Trade then can tell us about certain aspects of the desire for mobility: if we move more goods, or move them faster or further, than our neighbour, an advantage may be had.

The horse has been the pre-eminent beast of burden and primary facilitator of mobility for millennia. Even in the mechanised age, the horse remains in harness for a variety of continuing roles for which it hasn’t been bettered. The animal is strong, agile (as a quadruped, it can scramble over very rough terrain) and has great endurance. Most importantly, it can be domesticated and can socialise, forming companionship with other animals and humans. Horses have a number of useful cognitive abilities too, such as spatial discrimination, memory, levels of operant conditioning, and positive and negative reinforcement, all meaning that they can be trained, and as herbivores they are relatively easy to fuel (Chamberlin, 2006).

The horse had some competition from humans in some forms of transportation. The sedan chair – the name remains with us today in the description of a particular physical arrangement of car – was a means of carrying a single passenger. Porters would lift the passenger up between two carrying poles onto their shoulders via a yoke to transfer the load. In Asia, similar human-powered offerings manifested themselves as the rickshaw. In this instance, the passenger accommodation later became supported by wheels, thereby relieving the porters of much of the direct load and enabling them to channel their exertions better into forward motion.

Individuals could make more of the effort exerted by perambulation by putting their walking motion directly to rotating wheels, and so forms of the bicycle emerged. Slower but far less potentially troublesome than a living creature, the bicycle as we know it today emerged into its resolved form quite rapidly and hasn’t changed a great deal since. The rear-wheel-drive safety bicycle – or bike – opened up the countryside and, with that, the prospect of visiting neighbouring towns and returning all on the same day (Ambrose, 2013). The replacement of horses as the primary means of motive power, at least for heavy lifting, came with the emergence of the steam engine at the end of the 18th century. Performance comparisons between horses and engines led to the idea of measuring steam power in terms of how many horses could perform the same task. This helped market the idea of steam, since it could be more readily understood beside a known quantity. Early steam engine customers might commission an engine to match the output of their best and strongest horse. So, this 18th century measure – weight multiplied by distance divided by time – has endured as the archaic sounding unit of power, although now mostly replaced in metric form by the watt, appropriately named after James Watt, the inventor of steam power.

The steady movement away from an agrarian and rural society to an industrial and urban one from the late 18th century onwards was central to the evolution of mobility. The Industrial Revolution heralded major changes in society impacting upon almost every aspect of human experience. The shift from handmade cottage manufacture to mass production had extraordinary consequences upon the economy and society. A significant driver of this change was the ability to create rotary and reciprocating motion automatically and with power an order of magnitude greater than that possible with animals. Steam energy produced a lot of power in relation to its weight. The pressures created to produce steam power could be contained by advances in iron making, one of which was the ability to smelt the metal at high temperatures with coke-coal rather than expensive charcoal. All of this was ideal for creating a new form of engine. Guiding this engine along in terms of direction, while overcoming terrain and friction, was done by adapting a long-used mining technique of removing coal and spoil by rolling wheels over rails. In combining the two, Richard Trevithick invented the first moving steam engine or locomotive – meaning ‘place in motion’, which distinguished it from other, more stationary engines. Its eventual effect was as profound to that century as the internet was at the end of the 20th century.

In a similar fashion to the sedan chair, the form language of the locomotive was initially governed by physical necessities. As the engineering of the locomotive matured, a dominant form language emerged of the elongated boiler, firebox, cab and tender. Like all feats of engineering before and since, there was a remarkable beauty in the purity of this form for purpose. Before the emergence of industrial design as a profession, the early engineer was more successful if equipped with a sensitivity to form, materials and appearance. A natural beauty emerged as the best engineers of their kind also exercised the role of gestalt ingenieur: negotiating the laws of physics with an eye for the notion of aesthetics.

The maturing of rail technology cemented the place of mobility in culture. The sheer physical achievement of the railways led to the emergence of a culture of triumph. People loved the railways. The locomotive was emblematic of this triumph and manufacturers sought to increase its aura. The emergence of streamlining as a style, and indeed the emergence of styling itself as a rational and valuable undertaking, is well illustrated by Raymond Loewy's work on the locomotives of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1930s (Loewy, 1951). Some method of overcoming the surface resistance to movement presented by friction is one thing all modalities have in common. Rails do this for locomotive power. Canals and rivers equally enable waterborne craft to glide along through an otherwise unyielding land mass or between land masses. If general roadways were to compete with rail and facilitate extensive city streetscapes with better transport, something needed to be done about the quality of the running surface. Unsealed roads are prone to rutting, dust and erosion under prolonged heavy loads. Cobblestones provide some answers and many examples remain today, but an expanding road network required a faster and cheaper response. Crushed rock bonded by tar was patented in 1902 and forms the basis for the most popular form of road surface today, bitumen.

With this improved road surface performance, and at times rampant expansion, roads facilitated great mobility changes of their own. Steam engine vehicles on roads had been attempted but the absence of a smooth running surface made them an uncompetitive alternative. A smaller engine – still combusting petroleum fuel but to directly drive a piston, rather than creating steam to do the job – emerged in the second half of the 19th century. Directing this energy into wheels that could be propelled along a paved road required advances in suspension and tyres, as well as rudimentary forms of interface between driver and machine to negotiate control of the vehicle. The motor car eventually enabled widespread personal mobility to the masses by not only providing the instrument – the car – but also embracing a manufacturing process that made such personal ownership a possibility. Mass production of the type pioneered by Henry Ford still maintained the coach-building form language of passenger accommodation with power placed at the front to haul the passengers forward. Now more sophisticated reins were in the hands of the ordinary person in the form of steering wheel and brake pedals, and so a new set of skills and problems materialised. The invention of the car also heralded the invention of the car driver and the car traffic incident. Nevertheless, the car matured to take the pre-eminent position in mobility as the pinnacle of perceived freedom.

In addition to the basic amenity provided by the car, manufacturers go to great lengths to develop brand image and loyalty. Each model is expressive of its owners’ choices in appearance, performance, functionality and price, at least within the range offered (Urry, 2004). Comforts and accessories in cars are growing in sophistication and steadily coming within the reach of many. In car ownership, there is a sense of acceptance within a mobile society (Whitelegg, 1997). For the car driver, pleasure can be derived from the physical act of driving and the sense of accomplishment derived from an acquired skill. Motoring journalists often describe a car's handling as indicative of the particular car's performance benefit and especially as part of the pleasure of driving it. Patrons of public transport are not privileged to have such control over their mode of transport; benign acceptance of ride dynamics is the best they can hope for. What, then, should the design of the dynamic experience of a bus aim to achieve? It would appear to be part of the human condition to focus much attention, and sometimes anxiety, upon how we are perceived by others. This is an inevitable side effect of any democratic and largely egalitarian society (De Botton, 2007).

The modes of transport, especially the trappings of personal car ownership, play well into this human characteristic. Mark Bunting reflects in his seminal 2004 book Making Public Transport Work that nothing reflects failure more than being seen taking a bus. The exception which makes this all the more noticeable is found in Switzerland, where a more egalitarian, even rational, attitude is the norm: Americans may still agree with Honda's assertion that you meet the nicest people on a Honda, but you also meet the nicest Swiss people on a bus. Status is important because it determines how people relate to us: the supervisor and the employee, access to and the wielding of power, and whether or not people are nice to us. Personal ownership contributes to the formation of a self-image through brand recognition. Popular culture, especially television advertising, reinforces these images in depicting cars as functional and desirable but, above all, enabling the freedom of uninterrupted open roads, so much so that people in the former Communist East Germany would wait 20 years for the most rudimentary of cars.

The pursuit of a commercial relationship between manufacturer and consumer in personal mobility has certainly preferenced the car industry over public modalities, especially in relation to visual qualities and experiences, perhaps with the exception of premium offerings in quasi-public transport such as high-end rail and business class flight. There have been persistent and determined attempts by some designers to open up a dialogue between passengers and transport systems to more satisfying and graceful ends. Improved experiences encourage repeat usage. Greater customer satisfaction enables growth in revenue streams and corresponding investment in infrastructure improvements, and thus the cycle becomes ever more virtuous.

The following chapters of this book chart a path through the emerging streetscape of urban mobility design, beginning with the fundamental changes in how motive power is achieved and then progressively moving through considerations such as a future in which we will no longer be responsible for directly controlling our vehicles. We explore an improved access to places and conveyances; examine the touchpoints of interface between the means of mobility and the passenger; and consider the revolutionary changes in the way we will be experiencing our mobility in the coming years. The book concludes by discussing the design tools and progressive methods that underpin a human-centric journey experience, and considering how we might use these methods and tools to engage with new issues and challenges as yet unforeseen in the mobility landscape (Fig. 1.2).

Fig. 1.2 Structure of the book.

New Technology and New Form

Radical changes in mobility brought about by leaps in technology in this century, much like the last two, are redefining our relationship with vehicles and infrastructure; this relationship is now digitised, integrated and responding more positively to our emotional wellbeing. These developments are driven by design. As the refined form language of our familiar modes of transport reach an advanced state of maturity, they either die out or are re-imagined as new emergent technology that reframes their geometry. And so, the cycle of this arc of emergent, maturing and design refinement continues. This book focuses its attention on the new cycle emerging in the 21st century (Fig. 1.3).

Fig. 1.3 A continuous cycle of emergent technology followed by design.

In Chapter 2 we explore how future changes in technology, especially in energy and motive power systems, will herald changes in the form language of our otherwise familiar vehicles and infrastructure. Increasing concerns for environmental resilience in the face of global warming and climate change have given impetus to the development of new energy policies and technologies preferencing battery and hydrogen energy sources. Emissions of greenhouse gases continue to grow with implications for the health and wellbeing of the global population. Reports, white papers and research all identify transportation among the fastest growing contributors to CO2 emissions. The enormous scale of this environmental challenge is leading to the realisation that the demand for mobility needs to shift from personal transport to public mobility. The old approach advocated for more roads as part of the solution to congestion. The new approach is that fewer roads may well be the