Benefits of smarter mobility in connecting Scottish cities

This article first featured in The Times, 5 March 2020.

While space travel might become the norm for future generations, people are generally more interested in the best way to get around their local area and how to get to work without being stuck in traffic or on delayed trains.

To tackle such issues, futurists, academics, scientists, technologists and businesses are exploring big ideas of how to transform day-to-day-travel. The challenges of what is known as smarter mobility will be dissected at Scotland’s first ‘Connected Future’ event from international law firm CMS, in partnership with The Times and Sunday Times, in Glasgow on 28 April. Eleanor Lane, partner in the infrastructure and projects team at CMS in Glasgow, explains: “Smarter mobility is the tie up of all different sorts of transport – such as underground, tram, bus, bicycle and e-bikes – to make it easy to get from A to B with real-time data that guides you along the way.” 

That might sound relatively straightforward but, in reality, it will be hard to deliver. This is particularly true in Scotland’s historic cities where, as Lane points out, a lot of infrastructure was built to suit the requirements of decades ago, not 50 years in the future.

Mark McMurray, planning partner at CMS, adds that smarter mobility presents many challenges from a development and planning perspective. As is often the case when it comes to innovations in urban living, Scandinavian countries tend to be more advanced than UK cities in such areas as mobility as a service (MAAS) – the integration of various forms of transport into a single service accessible on demand. Lane explains: “In parts of Scandinavia, they have effectively gone back to the drawing board by ripping up existing planning rules and writing new acts of parliament that govern how they want transport to function in the future.” 

McMurray says strong leadership is needed to deliver smarter mobility, giving the example of Slovenia which last year launched integrated public transport nationwide, with the impetus coming from a mayor determined to move cars out of Ljubljana.

Duncan Turner, partner in CMS’s technology team, believes such a direct approach may be required in Scotland, with local authorities having to push ahead with sometimes unpopular change by explaining to residents that this is necessary to make cities better, more connected, places to live. Scotland is making progress – MAAS trials have been held in in Dundee and Edinburgh has committed to spending 10 per cent of its transport budget on encouraging people to walk or cycle, for example, rather than drive. But much remains to be done. UK-based Connected Kerb, whose chief executive officer Chris Pateman-Jones is speaking at ‘Connected Future’ in Glasgow, is already encouraging smarter mobility with its smart cities platform which “puts power and data at the kerbside”. At the event, Pateman-Jones will explain the company’s vision of creating “future-proofed streets for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers”.

To hear more about the benefits of smarter mobility, attend ‘Connected Future’ at The University of Strathclyde Innovation and Technology Centre, Glasgow in October 2020.  For more information go to: pages.today/connected-future