David, what are your personal experiences with rural mobility?
David Gordon: Well, my experiences in rural areas come mainly from my childhood. I grew up at the Chiemsee, a beautiful region in the heartland of Upper Bavaria. But I have had the experience that many people know: The bus comes three to four times a day and sometimes not at all, and you don't know why. Accordingly, I got to know the mobility in the country actually with the car.
Mobility has changed just also in the pandemic. How do you perceive that?
David Gordon: Well, the Covid pandemic, of course, has brought about a key change. People are working from home more now. That doesn't automatically mean everybody moves to the country. But there are more opportunities than there used to be to divide your work differently - and that's already led to this extreme move to the cities going down a bit, and more opportunities opening up in the countryside. But that leads directly to the next question: How do these people get where they want to go? So, to work, to the city, or to shop? Yes, and in perspective, we really have to think about how we can develop new concepts in individual regions where there is sometimes a lot of traffic - also seasonally. So, there are not least by the pandemic also new approaches.
Changes only the demand behavior or how is the expectation attitude?
David Gordon: Of course, you go in with a different expectation attitude, if you were, for example, in recent years in a mobility system on the road, where I can assume that every five minutes some means of transport comes. Be it streetcar, bus or subway. But you can't limit it to people who move from the city to the countryside, for example. In the countryside, too, the classic need to have one's own car is not such a given. So, I think when you talk about rural mobility, a few things are very important: First, it will never be about replacing the car. The car simply has many, many advantages that are very important in rural areas, and of course the immediate availability and thus also the convenience are decisive. We will never be able to replace such a mobility option. But conversely, that doesn't mean that everyone always wants to or can travel by car. There are people who can no longer drive a car, there are people who can't afford it
Or people who are still too young...
David Gordon: Exactly, that's also an important point. Quite classically so at the age of 18 you make the driver's license. There begins the great freedom - before that, either the parents drive or you go by bike. Sometimes that's more fun, sometimes less. So, we see that there are groups that are simply not considered for automobility at first, or are no longer considered, for a wide variety of reasons. And even then, there may be people who say, I don't really want to travel every distance by car. And exactly there it becomes interesting to create offers, which lead into another direction.
But how does it behave the traffic turnaround in the rural area?
David Gordon: When it comes to traffic turnaround, then is usually first thought of the city. Why? Because there the pressure is of course first of all greater to create alternatives to the car, because the cities are usually full during the week with commuters who stand in traffic jams.
In the countryside, this is not so obvious, but even there it is so, if I look at a region that attracts many holidaymakers or weekend tourists, for example, the Bavarian Oberland, then it also looks like that I have very, very much traffic in individual peaks, and then I am relatively quickly at a similar problem situation. That means: Yes, the focus is very much on the city, but in the countryside there are many reasons why I have to think about it differently. Now I only have one problem: The situation is ultimately different, because we don't have as many people living in a confined space, and for many smart mobility offerings, such as Carsharing or the much-discussed scooters, the providers need many people in a small space, so that they reach as many people as possible with their offer.
Can you equate electric mobility with the traffic turnaround?
David Gordon: In my opinion not.... the E-drive turnaround is quite important. We said earlier, the car will always play an important part in the country. It is of course important that in the future I have a form of propulsion other than an internal combustion engine or simply a climate-neutral one. However, I can't assume that everyone will always be able and willing to travel by car everywhere, and of course we may reach limits in certain regions as far as the charging infrastructure is concerned. In principle, of course, a charging station can be set up everywhere, but in individual regions the network load is then also an issue. That is, we really have to think very carefully about how in the future, even in rural areas, the "modal split", that is, the share of the individual modes of transport overall in the distances that people travel?
So, is a modern bus with a combustion engine the better choice than 40 or 50 e-vehicles?
David Gordon: That's just the point: What benefits me? Is it the public transport? Is it individual mobility with your own car? And yes, even there it can make more sense under certain circumstances, if the buses are always at full capacity. But it depends very specifically on individual cases, how it looks in the respective region. There quite a lot of people have already made various calculations, and that is really a case-by-case decision then.
What opportunities and what challenges lie in the mobility transition?
David Gordon: Well, there are different levels when you answer this question. The one comes from the citizens themselves, and there are really now a number of studies and surveys, where it comes out quite clearly: the people in the country also want these alternative forms of mobility. But that alone is a point on which you can't necessarily agree. For example, I know a municipality in the south of Munich, beautifully situated on a lake, that has been trying out an on-demand bus system for the last few years; citizens could order a ride via an app or by phone, from their own front door to the supermarket and back. The citizens think this is great, but the local council didn't like it so much and wanted to go back to the normal scheduled bus system. However, a referendum resulted in the decision to continue with the call bus. We see at this example however that there is quite still a large discussion whether it is actually necessary to have a good alternative to the car.
Another point is, is there then funds, which help the municipalities to bring these solutions to the start? Because it usually always needs an investment from the municipalities, at least when it comes to more technically complicated solutions as well. And we haven't even talked about the regulatory framework yet. In Bavaria, there are many projects with autonomous shuttles, i.e. self-driving minibuses for up to seven people, in order to achieve a different form of mobility. But these are pilot projects.
And even there, the regulatory framework can throw a spanner in the works, right?
David Gordon: Right. So that brings us to the next point, because who is driving all the buses, whether they are regular buses or call buses, in the countryside? The problem of a lack of skilled workers is also very, very big here. What you see here simply again is that mobility is complex, it affects every person, almost every day, and accordingly it is also always something where, in addition to the regulatory, in addition to the financial possibilities and the technical possibilities simply still a total social component plays into it, where people simply have to agree on what they would like to do.
Are there already best practices from which we can learn?
David Gordon: Yes, we are working, for example, in an EU project, where it is about mobility stations and where you bundle shared mobility offers. Larger cities, such as Amsterdam, are involved, but also smaller municipalities. In France, for example, a city near Paris with a population of around 12,000 is involved, which has the problem of not being able to find a provider for car sharing or rental bikes because they simply don't have enough potential customers. In other words, this problem is relatively similar - at least if you look at Europe. The same applies to autonomous or automated driving functions. Of course, this also has to do with the fact that this is often implemented in individual countries on the basis of EU legislation, but here, too, we are not yet beyond this pilot project status. I believe that this will remain the case for the next two to three years. It may be that larger cities will start to try it out, and we also know from the past that there is then a learning effect. So, if a sufficiently large number of municipalities have tried something like this, then the municipalities learn, but also the providers, and you slowly get in the direction that even outside the pilot project can apply new concepts.
What is your experience from the pilot projects? Do people immediately pull along?
David Gordon: In fact, it's not so easy to map. We have seen, for example, when I introduce shared mobility offers somewhere, then that is first of all still nothing, where people say, now I immediately give my second car, for example - and that's what it's often about, that you can maybe replace the second vehicle at all. Rather, you have to catch a certain point in time, for example when the lease on a car expires or when an age limit is reached. Then is such a moment where I can bring about a change with a good offer that people know and can understand and use very quickly.
Looking at autonomous shuttles, fears of contact have not proven true. There is, for example, a project in Bad Birnbach in Lower Bavaria that is now in its third project phase. It has been running for several years and is used by children up to people of 80 years and older.
The question is rather, how do we get financing models right? When will the technology be ready so that we can really ride without a safety person, and does the regulation then come along at the right place, at the right time.
But it certainly pays to just give it a try.
David Gordon: Absolutely, that's a very important point. It really depends on the people on the ground. If I have someone in the municipality or in the county who says, I think this is totally important, and we want to do this for our citizens, then something is possible there, because then you have to work your way through funding guidelines and other possibilities. But it works.
How can you help as a smart mobility expert?
David Gordon: We have a large network of important stakeholders business, science and the public sector and can thus provide the right contacts. If, for example, a municipality says, we find this exciting, and we now want to launch a project, then we can arrange some companies that may be able to help with their solutions or establish contact with other municipalities that may have tried something like this. Science simply plays an important role here, because we are still in the testing phase at the moment, so that the whole thing can be put on a solid footing. That is, I think, in the area really the central offer, and otherwise, of course, we always try to pass on innovations, technical innovations to our network.
What does mobility in rural areas look like in 2045?
David Gordon: We've learned that, especially when it comes to mobility, things always turn out differently than you think when we talk about the future. But I do believe that we will see these solutions that we talked about today in use across the board. We are in the very exciting phase at the moment, where a lot is being tried out. And I think we might see it in rural areas in 20 years that the car will still play a big role, but that, especially in terms of on-demand, I will have great offers, and I have great hope that the tariffs will also be as simple as possible.
Thank you very much for your interesting insights, David.
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