Mobility hubs are essential to make transportation more sustainable.
To get started, what are mobility hubs anyway?
Mobility hubs are places that bring together public, shared, and active travel modes with a public domain and an identifying sign. This can range from a bus stop with bike parking shared by a bike route, up to mega hubs in large-scale new developments, at major transportation nodes, highway service stations, hospitals, and so on
CoMoUK CEO Richard Dilks believes mobility hubs will play a key role in the sustainable transport revolution.
It helps supply and demand meet a range of sustainable transport options, increasing utilization and reducing costs. At the same time, they can be used to suppress or eliminate private parking, which is linked to private car use, which itself is part of what we must cut if we are to meet the legal commitment of zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
We know that transport is the UK’s biggest polluter, contributing about a third of all emissions. Within that, private vehicles are primarily responsible.
So to make a considerable and sustained impact on this, we need to get people out of their own cars and engaged in different transport habits. Hubs encourage exactly that and make the idea attractive.
According to Richard Dilks, we cannot simply shame people into changing their behavior. It didn’t work with cigarettes, and it won’t work this way now. We have to show them that there is something attractive on doing so.
The hub also needs it’s digital tool – the tool that can help people plan and achieve their sustainable journeys in an easy, attractive, and timely way. In turn, these can be combined with credit schemes or other incentives. As we think about the post-pandemic future, mobility centers can be a huge positive factor across the length and breadth of the UK.
