Sustainable Urban Mobility: Exploring the Role of Cities and Citizens

There are many ways in which cities can actively contribute to reducing the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of transportation, which in the U.S. accounted for approximately 30% of total emissions in 2021.

Actions include:

• Adapting their fleets
• Investing in electric vehicles (EV) to foster accessibility for individual users
• Working on congestion to reduce emissions
• Investing in public transportation improvements and more general mobility transformation programs

Various examples can already be found among major U.S. cities: New York is building a new subway line; Los Angeles and Seattle are planning to expand their light rail systems; San Francisco is targeting the transition to an all-electric bus fleet by 2035; and Boston is investing in parking spaces and implementing traffic management guidelines.

Looking more specifically at the issue of accessibility, cities have a significant role to play in reducing inequities in emerging sustainable mobility solutions. In the early stages of developing these solutions, the acquisition or access cost is always relatively high because of limited economies of scale. However, costs eventually decline, and the solutions become available to a greater number of people. Cities can enable a faster, more efficient spread and adoption of these solutions by developing and facilitating access to the required infrastructure. For example, developing on-street access to electric vehicle charging capabilities in dense urban centers can help make the charging infrastructure more accessible to people who do not own a garage. This would foster increased adoption of EVs, leading to a progressive drop in their acquisition prices.

Lastly, to facilitate the contribution of electric mobility to the sustainable transition, cities have a crucial role to play in accelerating the transformation of the way we produce energy and the shift towards renewable energy sources. Historically, the U.S. has lagged the rest of the world in sustainable transformations, while it should have been a leader in this area. Recent public-private dynamics show that new instruments, efforts, and agreements are being established (such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act), pointing at a pivotal moment for the country.

The development of new low-carbon mobility solutions (which may or may not be technology-based as technology is a major but not the only driver of sustainable transformation) by start-ups is complementary to the efforts of cities to develop or upgrade infrastructures and allows us to further transform our models to meet the demands of the 21^st century. In addition, the success of start-ups is based on economies of scale, making them critical players in driving down the costs of emerging low-carbon mobility solutions to increase their affordability and accessibility to the greater public.

There are various examples, such as Circuit, a start-up that is developing a truly innovative business model: providing free last-mile electric transportation on demand using an advertising model to finance the system’s costs. Returning to electric vehicles, one of the most significant costs is connecting power sources to the grid. For example, one start-up called itselectric developed a solution that enables electric car owners to charge their vehicles at nearby buildings directly from the sidewalk with the building owner getting a share of the price charged. In fact, the impact of this type of solution to support the goals for the public sector, while empowering the individuals and the private sector to take a lead role is one of the reasons that itselectric was just awarded our AcceliCITY program’s Resilience Solution of the Year as well as the People’s Choice award. Another start-up called Voltpost is studying solutions to use lamp posts as electric vehicle chargers.

At Leading Cities, we firmly believe there is a major role for co-creation, which we envision as going beyond the classic 3P (Public-Private Partnership) framework. We prefer a focus on a 4Ps approach: Public-Private-People Partnerships. Looking at electric vehicles, although cities have control over their own fleets, they do not have control over the vast majority of cars in circulation. Collaborating with the private sector for better fleet management and conversion, while working with citizens to increase infrastructure accessibility and support the adoption of new solutions, appears to be crucial in leading the transformation of transportation and allows for much more impact collectively. Co-creation is about ensuring that the system created meets the expectations of all stakeholders, is being adopted and used, and achieves the goal of reducing carbon emissions.

The democratization of decisions taken by cities by involving the public is central in the work conducted and supported by Leading Cities and offers two fundamental benefits:

• The first is that it helps raise general awareness of crucial sustainability issues and the efforts and sacrifices required while also allowing citizens to have some ownership over the decisions made.
• The second, and equally important, benefit is that it helps civil servants better understand the expectations of citizens and, consequently, take better informed risks. For the expansion of Los Angeles’ light rail system, for example, the public was included in the decision-making and voted for several overrides* aimed at increasing taxes to pay for the project. While a civil servant’s instinct might have been to exclude this option as unpopular the public demonstrated a willingness to contribute to the sustainable transformation.

Evidence suggests that the inclusion of citizens in the decision-making processes of cities could pave the way to greater acceptability of risk and change by cities to support sustainable mobility for all.

* Metro, https://www.metro.net/about/measure-r/ (2008); Metro, https://www.metro.net/about/measure-m/ (2023)