By Nicola Spurling (Commissioner, National Commission on Travel Demand)
In 2018-2019 I continued to serve as a consulting sociologist in my role as commissioner on the National Commission on Travel Demand’s second inquiry. I had also served in this role on the first inquiry.
The Second Report and a Summary is publicly available.
Funded as part of the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, this second inquiry turned attention to an area of policy critical for rapid decarbonisation of travel, Shared Mobility.
The inquiry focussed on the state of the art in understanding the potential to increase the occupancy of vehicles-in-use, reduce individual ownership of assets and enhance multi-modal travel. We used the term ‘shared mobility’ to mean:
- Shared ownership: where the use of the vehicle asset is shared across individuals, including various models of commercially or peer-to-peer operated ‘car clubs’/ car-sharing schemes, fractional car ownership, bike sharing schemes.
- Shared at the point of use: Car/ride sharing (or trip sharing) – rides that are actually shared between different individuals or different parties, sometimes paid separately. In the future this may include ‘robot taxis’ or ‘automated vehicles’ where the vehicle is shared across individuals.
The initiative was chaired by Greg Marsden (Professor of Transport Governance, Leeds Uni). I served as commissioner alongside Jillian Anable (Professor in Transport and Energy, Leeds Uni), Jonathon Bray (Director, Urban Transport Group) and Elaine Seagriff (Jacobs Consulting, previously Head of Policy and Strategy for Transport for London).
Our report made recommendations to the Department for Transport, the Committee on Climate Change, HM Treasury, Connected Places Catapult, Highways England, local government and companies involved in this space.
Nicola Spurling 