The coronavirus outbreak has revealed the opportunities for change in how we plan our cities. What is needed now is the will to make that change happen.
The last month has brought unprecedented changes to our everyday lives. A once unimaginable scenario has played out across the world, causing major challenges for health, local and national economies, and our social lives and communities. But in our towns and cities, major changes are taking place in mobility, too.Â
Testing times in urban mobility
The coronavirus outbreak has caused major disruptions and changes to urban life. With three billion people worldwide under orders to avoid unnecessary travel, urban transport systems have changed beyond recognition. With everyone but essential workers working from home, the normal rush of city traffic is now non-existent. Shops, bars, restaurants, museums, galleries and public areas are closed, leaving once thriving spaces now empty. People have changed how, where, when and how often they travel in a way like never before.
The impact of this is clear to see in the data. Cities across Europe are reporting substantial drops in the use of public transport, with cities like London reporting an 85% drop in usage. People are travelling less overall, but those who are still travelling are also often avoiding public transport in an effort to keep social-distant to avoid unnecessary exposure to the virus. Car traffic is down substantially in many cases, with people either no longer having a reason to travel into and around cities by car (e.g. to work), or being discouraged from making unnecessary trips. Micro-mobility services have taken a hit too, with many e-scooter companies across Europe and the US pulling out of cities and suffering large losses in income. But there is one area which appears to be bucking the trend: Walking and cycling.
Returning streets to people
Since the outbreak of the virus and the introduction of lockdown measures, many cities have seen a huge growth in the number of people walking and cycling to get around for daily journeys. This isn’t exactly surprising: You’re less exposed to other people compared to when taking public transport, it’s free and easy, and what’s more you can get your daily exercise in whilst doing other things like going to the shops.Â
So meteoric has the rise in walking and cycling been that some cities have had to take rapid action to accommodate this uptake in active travel. Cities across the world - from Bogotá to Budapest to Berlin - have been setting up temporary bike lanes and closing off streets to provide safe, convenient access for people walking and cycling. What is particularly incredible about this is that it’s been done basically overnight in many cases, a far cry from the usual approach for creating more space for walking and cycling, which in some cases takes years to implement. In a matter of days, cities have become safe havens for travelling actively, allowing a wider range of people to get around on foot or by bike and enjoy all the benefits that come with doing so.Â
What is clear from this disruption to normal life is just how much space there is to reclaim for people in cities. Social media has been awash with images of cities across the world now largely free from cars. For many people it has taken a crisis to show how much precious space is really taken up by cars in our urban areas, and how conditioned we have become by the ill effects of too many vehicles (see here, here and here). Karl Jilg’s classic image below demonstrates this better than anything I can say.Â
Image credit: Karl Jilg/Swedish Road Authority
Streets which normally serve as mere corridors for car traffic are being shown in a new light, revealing a hidden potential to be not just areas that people move through, but places that people can spend time, shop, eat, relax, play and enjoy. With lockdowns still in place, people obviously can’t enjoy these spaces for what they are at the moment. But for many, seeing open and welcoming streets in their full glory has sparked a vision of a better future for our cities and the people that live there.
Crisis sparking collaboration
These are testing times, but this crisis is sparking innovative and collaborative partnerships approaches across the world. Local government and private operators have been coming together to provide mobility solutions for people to move around cities at a time when public transport has been severely limited. In particular, efforts have been made to get essential workers - such as healthcare workers - where they need to be in a safe and convenient manner. Initiatives such as in Glasgow, where the City Council has partnered with Nextbike to provide free shared bikes and e-bikes for essential workers across the city, are not only providing a vital service in a time of need, but are also showing what can be achieved with strong public-private cooperation and collaboration. Similar schemes have been carried out in Bogotá, where an e-bike company is providing their services free of charge to health workers in the Colombian capital. These collaborations are just a taste of what is possible with strong public-private partnerships centred around delivering for the common good.
Lessons for the future
These are exceptional times, and the number one priority for every citizen, government and business right now should be keeping people safe and getting out of this health crisis. But it’s clear from the response of cities in adapting urban mobility to deal with COVID-19 that there is a huge opportunity to use this time to rethink how we do urban mobility and how our cities look. If lessons are learned and changes enacted, we could see a real shift towards healthy, efficient and sustainable transport systems in cities.
Reducing the need to travel
Arguably the biggest impact of COVID-19 on day-to-day life has been the massive shift to working from home. Whilst there are of course jobs that can’t be done from home, what has become clear is just how feasible home-working is for many types of employment. People are realising that it’s possible to get just as much done at home as in the office (if not more). In a post-covid world when normal life has resumed, working from home could be a very attractive option for many people (especially when children return to school!). With the right support and more flexibility in employers’ attitudes to home-working, it’s not hard to imagine a future where home-working plays a much bigger role in people’s working week. When you consider just how many journeys are taken every day getting people to and from work, the impact of more home-working for congestion, carbon emissions, air pollution and more could be huge.
International travel restrictions have also shown just how feasible reducing business travel is. Teleconferencing platforms have come into their own in the times of lockdown, and have proved to be a credible alternative to travelling for meetings. Whilst there’s a lot to be said for face-to-face meetings, is it really necessary to fly halfway across the world when an instant video call would get the job done? With sustainability an ever-growing concern for employers of all shapes and sizes, cutting back on flights taken for business travel is an easy win with considerable financial and time savings to be made.
People-first planning
One of the key takeaways from this upheaval to urban mobility is just how much space there is to reclaim for people in cities. Simple changes to rebalance space in cities in favour of walking and cycling can enable more people, and crucially a wider range of people, to get around on foot or by bike freely and safely The response of some cities has shown that making larger, safer bike lanes really is just as simple as painting new lines and cordoning off the space. Similarly, many cities have shown that pedestrianising streets is just as simple as blocking them off to vehicles with low-cost and quick-to-implement measures. Retaining other measures implemented to reduce the spread of COVID-19, such as automated pedestrian crossings, can help to put people first in cities and make it that little bit more safe, enjoyable and convenient for people to walk around and spend time in cities. We all know just how important getting more people walking and cycling is for all sorts of reasons. Rebalancing space in cities is the best way to achieve that.
Public transport as a public service
The disruption to public transport from COVID-19 has shone a light on just how important our buses, metros, trams and trains are to keeping cities moving. Despite the challenges, there’s been cases of public transport coming into its own to deal with COVID-19, like in Manchester, where free travel has been provided for health workers. It’s easy to forget just how important public transport is for connecting people - particularly those on low incomes and older people - to essential services. In this sense, public transport is more than just ‘transport’. It’s access to employment, education, healthcare, services, leisure, and society as a whole. We need to view public transport as a public service and a vital part of our society to connect people and places, rather than well-functioning public transport being viewed as a ‘nice to have’. In a post-covid world, every city needs to treat public transport as an essential part of creating a fair and successful society.
Mobility serving people’s needs, not driving them
The COVID-19 outbreak has revealed the need for more resilient and responsive transport systems. Yes, this has been a unique situation with unique conditions, but new challenges will arise in the future which cities will need to respond and adapt to. For too long, urban transport systems have in many cases been too rigid and unresponsive to society’s changing conditions. The result is urban transport where people are dependent on or forced into unsustainable travel choices like driving, due to a lack of alternatives or a lack of convenience. We need a suite of options for urban transport which enables people to choose the most convenient option for the journey in question, and to allow more resilient mobility systems that keep people moving when something goes wrong. Public transport disrupted? Use this shared bike. Road closed off? Use this e-scooter. Heavy rain and don’t want to cycle today? Get on the bus/tram here. And so on. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is helping to shift the transport paradigm to make mobility serve people’s needs by providing a suite of options. As an industry still in relative infancy, MaaS is going through challenging times at the moment. But if initiative is taken in the aftermath of COVID-19, there is a chance to put choice and needs at the heart of urban transport, rather than being a mere add-on to existing services.
COVID-19 has caused disruption on a level rarely seen before and the world will take time to recover. But there is also a chance to learn from this crisis, not just in healthcare and emergency response, but in how urban mobility might be better designed in the future. If we learn from this, there’s a chance to create cities which work better for everyone. We know the solutions, we now just need the will to make it happen.