Smart mobility? It's all about 'collaborative consumption'

A lot of discussion about low-carbon transport centers on vehicle technology, but that is only part of the solution. Zero-emission cars certainly have a part to play in terms of reducing reliance on fossil fuels and reducing environmental impacts but they don’t begin to address the issue of congestion.

Here at Carbon Voyage, we have just launched a collaborative transport service with Earls Court and Olympia, two of the United Kingdom’s biggest event venues that play host to millions of visitors and tens of thousands of exhibitors each year with big events such as the Ideal Home Show and London Book Fair. Not surprisingly, the transport associated with this creates significant congestion problems and is a major element in event-related carbon emissions. At any major transport hub or big event, it is common to see big queues of people trying to get a cab (many in the same direction), big queues of cabs waiting to pick up one person at a time, and lots of trucks showing up half empty and leaving empty.

What this situation highlights is that a lot of the congestion and carbon impacts don’t need to happen because many journeys are taken individually without any reference to who may be taking similar journeys. This is partly why 1/3 of all truck journeys are completely empty and 60% of all car trips have only the driver — and unsurprisingly this means that people are paying for this inefficiency.

Collaborative consumption is a movement that tries to address these inefficiencies that exist in everyday life, as we see with companies such as Airbnb and Zipcar: Can I hire out my spare room? Do I really need a car that sits in the driveway? or even, Can I hire out my empty driveway to someone looking for a parking spot? As the world increasingly becomes a resource-constrained place due to population growth and urbanization, finding efficiencies through shared use could move from being a nice-to-have to a must-have.

In the context of transport, this becomes a crucial issue because of space constraints. Collaboration also helps with mode shift — finding better ways of moving groups of people. In the case of Earls Court, by matching demand for people wanting to go to the same airport, a bus can not only be a third to half the cost of a taxi, but also is quicker because there are fewer vehicles queuing up to transport people.

Congestion is a multi-billion-pound problem in London alone. Collaborating with others is one of the very few ways of addressing this — unless, of course, we all stop moving around.

Editor’s note: This was a guest commentary by James Swanston, who is the founder of Carbon Voyage and an army officer in his spare time. You can follow Carbon Voyage on Twitter (@carbonvoyage).