Sustainable Urban Mobility: More Than a Public Administration Concern

While our previous transport-related posts concerned sustainable transport in general and sustainable railway, this post focuses on sustainable urban mobility. Managing the mobility of people and goods is one of the most challenging aspects of society. By 2030 passenger traffic is predicted to increase 50 percent (exceeding 80,000 billion passenger-kilometers) and freight volume by 70 percent globally.^[1]

In 2005, the EU transport ministers defined sustainable mobility as allowing the basic access and development needs of individuals, companies, and societies to be met safely and in a manner consistent with human and ecosystem health, and equity within and between generations.^[2] It also needs to be affordable, to operate fairly and efficiently, to offer choices of transport modes, and to support a competitive economy and balanced regional development.^[3] Sustainable mobility also needs to limit emissions and waste (given the planet’s ability to absorb them), to use renewable resources at or below their rates of generation, and to use non-renewable resources at or below the rates of development of renewable substitutes while minimizing the impact on land and the generation of noise.^[4]

Sustainable urban mobility, therefore, links individuals, companies in which they work or consume, and cities’ ecosystems, since it entails moving people and goods from Point A to Point B and enables access to education, employment, culture, and leisure. As such, sustainable mobility helps support a stronger economy and a higher standard of living for citizens, while minimizing negative environmental and social impacts, ensuring more livable and sustainable cities.

While COVID-19 offered a chance to re-think the way we move around and organize corporate logistics, the post-pandemic period shows little progress in curbing mobility-related pollution and emissions.^[5] Post-pandemic mobility reports show some numbers that exceed pre-pandemics levels.^[6] The call for sustainable mobility has propelled a number of converging technological and social changes: carsharing and ridesharing; electric vehicles; new lightweight materials and the growth of connected and/or automated vehicles, which gave birth to a new ecosystem of mobility, aiming for faster, cheaper, cleaner, more efficient, and safer travel.

To reach carbon neutrality by the 2050, a significant reduction of Scope 3 emissions is needed for public and private organizations, which is possible only if organizations manage urban mobility emissions. Some companies have already facilitated and implemented sustainable mobility plans. Those that haven’t need to minimize the emissions of their employees’ mobility and those of their business activities, while measuring and managing their Scope 3 emissions with automatized systems that facilitate strategic emission-lowering decisions.

Tackling Scope 3 emissions is especially complex in manufacturing. It requires expert knowledge, measurement tools, and the ability to bring suppliers, customers, and employees together, acknowledging the different stages of sustainability across the stakeholders. Standardizing the disclosure framework to collect and report data and to set goals is a time- and resource-intensive exercise.

The EU’s Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators (SUMI) can serve as starting points. The mandatory indicators have been set as follows:

• Indicator 1: Affordability of public transport for the poorest group
• Indicator 2: Accessibility of public transport for mobility-impaired groups
• Indicator 3: Air pollutant emissions
• Indicator 4: Noise hindrance
• Indicator 5: Road deaths
• Indicator 6: Access to mobility services
• Indicator 7: Greenhouse gas emissions
• Indicator 8: Congestion and delays
• Indicator 9: Energy efficiency
• Indicator 10: Opportunity for Active Mobility
• Indicator 11: Multimodal integration
• Indicator 12: Satisfaction with public transport
• Indicator 13: Traffic safety active modes

Organizations creating mid- and long-term strategic sustainable mobility plans will need to focus on air pollutant emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy efficiency. That entails navigating the complex regulatory reporting landscape, internal steering, heterogeneous data landscapes, climate models, and scenario analysis to achieve the 2050 net-zero objective — to provide electric vehicles to employees, to enforce collective transport, to expand teleworking, to define needs, to gather and process data on current mobility trends, and to ensuring the feasibility of achieving net-zero.

All the activities above are supported by SAP Profitability and Performance Management (PaPM), which allows quick tailoring to company-specific requirements for instant insights based on deep granular analysis, all in a no-code modelling environment. It allows for efficient data gathering and management and what-if simulations and modelling, which facilitates public/private cooperation between businesses and cities and allows the creation of a sustainable mobility network to diminish Scope 3 emissions for all the stakeholders involved.

In general, the steps to minimizing sustainable mobility Scope 3 emissions are:

1. Focus on people (not on traffic) with the primary objectives of accessibility and quality of life (health, environmental quality, and economic viability)
2. Integrate development of all transport modes for your business functions and your employees
3. Combine infrastructure, market, regulation, information, and promotion in the city to guide corporate sustainable mobility plans
4. Embed short and medium-term delivery plans in long-term visions and strategy
5. Cover a functional urban area based on travel-to-work flows
6. Create interdisciplinary planning teams
7. Systematically evaluate impacts to facilitate learning and improvement

You can add these actions to facilitate your company’s sustainable mobility plan:

1. For employees:
   • Provide electric vehicles
   • Support collective transport, carpooling, and or cycling
   • Allow labor flexibility and teleworking
   • Provide training
   • Manage parking

2. For core business activities:
   • Provide a green fleet, carsharing services, and electric charging points
   • Enable telemetering (tracking and geolocation)
   • Provide an operations-mobility service and/or optimize distribution routes
   • Manage remotely
   • Encourage collaboration
   • Enhance the design and operation of properties

While the strategic vision for sustainable mobility is long-term, short- and mid-term goals should be set (individually and in cooperation with local authorities), based on real-time data and accurate predictions and verifiable future scenarios, supported by an IT tool that allows you to measure your starting point and to continuously support your achievement of those goals. With such support, your 2050-zero ambition can become a reality before its time, with your sustainability strategies fulfilled.

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_{^[1] World Bank (2017) Sustainable Mobility for the 21st Century, available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2017/07/10/sustainable-mobility-for-the-21st-century.}

_{^[2] European Commission (2005) SUMMA SUstainable Mobility, policy Measures and Assessment, available at https://trimis.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/project/documents/20060821_163845_61522_SUMMA%20Final%20Report.pdf.}

_{^[3] Ibid.}

_{^[4] Ibid.}

_{^[5] See European Parliament (2020) COVID-19 and urban mobility: impacts and perspectives, available at:  https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2020/652213/IPOL_IDA%282020%29652213_EN.pdf; Mejía-Dorantes, L.; Montero, L.; Barceló, J. Mobility Trends before and after the Pandemic Outbreak: Analyzing the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona through the Lens of Equality and Sustainability. Sustainability 2021, 13, 7908. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147908.}

_{^[6] García-Ayllón, S.; Kyriakidis, P. Spatial Analysis of Environmental Impacts Linked to Changes in Urban Mobility Patterns during COVID-19: Lessons Learned from the Cartagena Case Study. Land 2022, 11, 81. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11010081.}