In short: it will stop Mobility as a Service becoming a thing, the British are beautifully strange, and we have some data that shows the psychological profile of early adopters.
Good day my good friend.
It’s Modern Christmas, and that means one thing: Christmas parties being cancelled due to COVID. A needed reminder that we are not out of the woods yet. Here are your links for today.
James
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MaaS is unlikely to happen unless legacy systems are scrapped.
The European Commission has published a public consultation, seeking people’s views on the barriers to multi-modal digital mobility services. There are plenty of consumer side issues such as accessibility and skills with technology. There is no shortage of ideas on systems architectures and the need for open data to be published. But such a system change needs a system response, and that takes time.
A huge issue that is still prevelant across transport is legacy systems. As the experience of the roll-out of the Bus Open Data Service has indicated, whilst many organisations have come a long way in their technological capability, there is still a long way to go. Technological maturity in the transport industry still lacks behind the requirements of even the basics of Mobility-as-a-Service. And no, publishing your data as a CSV file isn’t open data. Time to start legislating, I think.
Us Brits are not all stiff upper lips, number 342223988
Yesterday I posted some analysis of driving licence ownership trends since 2015 (hint: a huge drop in the 40-49 year old age group), but this from the Driving and Vehicle Licencing Agency I had to share more widely. One in Six Brits have named their car, and the names given make me proud to be from this blessed isle.
The most popular names include Max, Ruby, and Doris (the latter cornering the over 60s market, I would guess?). ZZ Top and Lady Patricia are very good choices (the real Lady Patricia had given her name to some buses in Swindon), The Beast is a bit meh, but I can just imagine someone calling their Honda Accord Olaf. Good job, my fellow Brits, good job.
Early adopters are key to the success of new transport technologies, and some new research has shed some light on them
The adoption of any new technology relies on a group of early adopters willing to take a risk on a new service or technology. This is ably shown by the innovators and early adopters in the technology adoption curve. This is often considered in terms of the willingness to accept risk, although the original research that established this curve shows more nuance than that. We now have some insight for transport.
Research from Russia has shown a variety of socio-economic and psychological factors that influence early adopters of 3 transport technologies: car sharing, electric cars, and autonomous cars. This showed that the psychological factors are particularly pronounced in terms of people’s willingness to try new transport technologies. To the shock of nobody who has ever worked in travel behaviour change:
Our data show that the presence of self-expression values, a generally positive attitude towards science and technology, as well as positive attitudes towards novelties, have a strong correlation with the willingness to try out any of the transportation innovations.
Random things
The usual things from across the web, just for you:
‘Battery arms race’: how China has monopolised the electric vehicle industry (The Guardian)
Institutional Issues: Coordination (Pedestrian Observations)
Treasury blocks £30bn plan to electrify Britain’s railways (The Telegraph)
Energy Dome uses carbon dioxide as a grid-scale battery (New Atlas)
Grounded! What did a year without flying do to the world? (The Guardian)
Interesting things
That’s a long train journey.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
Read this excellent summary of the case for change on our streets by Henry Mance in the Financial Times. A great journalist puts the argument succintly, and he does that.
Oh, and check out my latest post for premium subscribers on driving licence statistics.
Mobility Matters 