23 minute read
Space to breathe
Covid-19 has changed the way cities around the world are managing public space and traffic flow, with parking lots turning into al fresco dining areas and new cycle lanes popping on urban streets. But are these changes here to stay and how have they impacted congestion?
Words | Paul Willis
New York City’s bustling Korea Town district is reclaiming street space for pedestrians and outdoor dining, in the heart of Manhattan
The Covid-19 crisis has led to major changes in the way public space is used in Europe’s urban centers. As lockdowns began to lift in the summer of 2020, European cities, like their counterparts around the globe, found themselves with quiet streets and urban populations desperate for some respite after weeks, sometimes months, of stay-at-home orders in place.
In response to this came a boom in outdoor dining and along with it a proliferation in dedicated cycle paths. In Milan, Italy, for example, the lifting of a tax related to restaurants and bars’ square footage paved the way for around 1,500 businesses to expand their outdoor facilities, resulting in the loss of around 3,000 parking spaces, notes Arianna Censi, Milan’s city councillor for mobility.
Known as parklets, these al fresco dining spots became common in many other European cities. At the same time large sections of many city centres became cut off to cars.
In Paris, the city’s iconic Rue de Rivoli, which runs adjacent to the Louvre, was turned into a multi-lane bicycle highway as the city’s mayor, Anne Hildago, designated more than 50km of traffic lanes to bikes. In London, meanwhile, the emergence of so-called pop-up bike lanes saw protected cycleways created on Park Lane in the West End and another on Euston Road in central London.
But if these Covid-era changes are to become permanent, what will be the impact on traffic flow and congestion? Isn’t there a danger that restricting car access in one area will lead to congestion elsewhere in the city, especially as traffic volumes return to normal?
According to Censi, the evidence so far suggests not. “Road use is currently a little higher than it was pre-pandemic,” she says. Yet despite this they have seen only a “low impact on traffic flows” from the Covid-era changes to public space.
Careful planning
Permanent fixtures?
This repurposing of outdoor space was mirrored throughout the world. In New York City, for example, a total of 8,550 parking spots were given up for outdoor dining at the height of the pandemic. In most places these changes have been welcomed. In Milan, for example, Censi says that while “there have been some protests” it is much less than in the past when similar changes to public space were attempted.
She puts this down to a change in our priorities brought on by the pandemic. “The need for outdoor spaces and the desire to socialize after long closures were widely shared by people and have been satisfied by the rise in outdoor dining,” says Censi.
The popularity of these Covid-era measures means that many cities are considering making them permanent. In London, local councils in the west and central areas of the city have already signalled their desire to make outdoor dining a permanent fixture. There are also plans to establish pedestrian piazzas on either side of the city’s busiest pedestrian junction, Oxford Circus.
In Paris too, Mayor Hildago has publicly stated her intention to retain the car-free measures brought in during the pandemic. This feeling is echoed in Milan by Censi. “We are all waiting for a return to normalcy in everyday life but, in terms of mobility, I would not want to step back from the results achieved this last year and I would like to maintain many of the choices we have made as permanent,” she says.
1,500
Censi puts this down in part to the city’s careful management of the changes, which were not restricted to the parklets and included the rollout of 35km of new cycle lanes and a program to pedestrianise several of Milan’s piazzas.
“All our interventions were deeply evaluated using computer modelling to estimate their impacts on places and people,” says Censi. “At the same time, they were also the result of a long engagement process with residents.” In some cases, the pedestrianisation of public space was mitigated against alterations to traffic routing. “In several cases it was necessary to create one-way roads, especially when there were several streets leading to the same square,” she adds. It was also managed through traffic calming measures. In the QT8 district in the west of Milan, for example, some roadways were narrowed, and the sidewalks widened “with the purpose of naturally decreasing cars’ speed and creating more space for pedestrians,” Censi explains. A number of 30km/h zones were also introduced in several areas of the city.
According to Nikos Tsafos, an expert in sustainable cities and mobility at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington DC-based think-tank, lowering speed limits on the periphery of the newlypedestrianised areas helps make them safer to access. He believes this is also part of a general trend in the traffic management of cities that is seeing the priority shift away from traffic flow.
“Maximizing flow can only come when you prioritise cars over other forms of transport,” says Tsafos. “I think there are many city mayors who would say that their goal is not to have cars move as quickly as possible through the city because that leads to fatalities. Their goal instead is to create friction, to slow traffic down.”
In Milan, pandemic lockdowns were the catalyst that led to the remodelling of roadways into urban, outdoor social spaces – leading in turn to new traffic-management challenges
Above: Empire Diner in Manhattan has used road space to create an alfresco dining area
Brianne Eby, senior policy analyst, Eno Center for Transportation, Washington DC Impact on congestion
Tsafos thinks this trend away from prioritizing road traffic was likely only furthered by the pandemic where many cities were able to experience first-hand the positive impact reducing car access can have on a city’s vitality. “A lot of business owners think that their money comes from cars being able to access them,” says Tsafos. “Whereas what we see a lot of times is that when you shut down the streets you increase pedestrian flow, and businesses benefit. They were able to see this for themselves during the pandemic.”
Tsafos also believes that the lack of impact the changes to public space in Milan have had on traffic congestion may be less to do with good planning and more because of how driver behaviour changes in accordance with accessibility. He says: “While we haven’t had time to study what has happened with the pandemic, cities have a lot of experience of converting streets to pedestrian-only and the thing that we’ve learned in general is that traffic adjusts. If you make more space for cars, more people use cars. But if you take space away, car use shrinks.” Tsafos gives the example of the creation of a large pedestrian plaza in New York’s Times Square in 2014, which despite the concerns of the then-mayor Michael Bloomberg, had little adverse effect on congestion in the city. The changes to public space in 15 New York brought on by the pandemic are also not believed to have had much impact on traffic The magic number for modern urban design – all congestion even as traffic volumes have returned to their pre-pandemic levels, citizens should have access notes a spokesman to essential urban services for the New York City within a 15-minute Department of Transportation. walk or cycle The importance of transit But in the case of Milan and New York, these are both cities with good public transport systems. In places where this is not the case the Covid-era changes may be harder to retain, Tsafos believes. “It’s very difficult to restrict car traffic in the absence of compelling alternatives,” he says. He thinks the same holds true for reducing parking space availability. “If you take away parking spots but there are no transportation alternatives all you’ve done
What will the ‘new normal’ look like?
Trying to understand the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on city traffic management doesn’t just mean looking at changes to public space. It also means grappling with the question of how the pandemic has changed work patterns, according to Brianne Eby, a senior policy analyst with the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington DC.
“Prior to the pandemic, city traffic flows were fairly predictable, with peaks during the morning and evening commute periods and traffic more stable throughout the rest of the day,” says Eby. “But right now, many people are working in a kind of hybrid situation where they go to the office a few days a week and work from home the rest of the time. Therefore, a lot of how you manage traffic in a city going forward might hinge on this question of: what does going back to the office look like?”
Prior to the pandemic, she notes, much of the management and construction of roadways within a city has been about having enough capacity to accommodate the peak traffic periods. But if the hybrid model of working stays, then these peak commute periods could conceivably become a thing of the past.
“Transit agencies may have to shift their focus away from servicing the commuter periods and instead concentrate on providing a more reliable service throughout the day,” Eby adds.
Above: In Brooklyn, New York, whole streets were made inaccessible to cars during lockdowns Below: And in Queens an exercise class took place in the middle of a road is reduce mobility services and accessibility to the city,” he adds.
In the absence of mass-transit alternatives promoting cycling is one way to mitigate against the transportation loss you create when you reduce car use. Many European cities took advantage of the unusual circumstances offered by the pandemic to prioritise bike use.
In both Italy and France programmes were established whereby residents who invested in bikes were eligible for government stipends. In Paris, the expansion of the cycle lanes was incorporated into a broader vision of the 15-minute city, a new concept in urban design that starts from the proviso that all residents in a city should have access to essential urban services within a 15-minute walk or cycle.
In Milan too, Censi notes that the changes that have happened in response to the pandemic are part of a bigger shift that is seeing the city move its mobility priorities from four- to twowheeled transport.
She says that bike use in Milan has yet to take off to the same levels as in other European cities such as Copenhagen, Amsterdam, or Paris. She thinks this is “partly for cultural reasons, and partly for safety reasons.”
Even so, says Censi, “the goal is to increase cycle lanes to consolidate and increase the use of bikes.” She adds: “The traffic has now returned to pre-pandemic levels but the goal over time is to decrease the number of cars circulating in Milan. I don’t think we’ll go back to how things were.” n
Milan’s public space revolution
Nowhere was the opportunity to re-imagine public space more fiercely embraced than in Milan. Within a few months of the March 2020 lockdowns the city had released a 36-page report on using the pandemic to transition the city to a car-free future. In the report, titled Open Streets, it was noted that the current crisis offered “an unprecedented opportunity” to do this.
The report included an array of proposals including cycle lane expansion, 30km/h zones, sidewalk expansion, pedestrian-only streets and parklets. The scope and depth of the Open Streets report attested to the fact that many of the changes were already being trialled in the city.
For example, Open Squares, the initiative to pedestrianize many of Milan’s piazzas was first trialled in September 2018. At the end of 2019, a public consultation began inviting neighbourhoods from around the city to submit piazzas for possible inclusion in the scheme. As proof of Milan residents’ enthusiasm for the scheme, a total of 65 proposals were submitted.
“The roads have always been considered as something useful to go from A to B,” says Arianna Censi, Milan’s city councillor for mobility. “With these new urban changes, we tried to get people to consider them as something different, as places to socialize and which provide cultural value.”
MaaS adoption
Mobility as a Service (MaaS) aims to take stress out of multimodal travel, thereby reducing private car use and increasing transit ridership. Although the idea has been around for 15 years, it’s taken time to catch on. Now the Dutch are determined to make it mainstream, sparking an exciting competition among providers
Words | Django Mathijsen
With the Amaze Mobility app users can plan, pay and travel with public transport or shared mobility
Mobility as a Service isn’t just an app that searches through all available mobility options and plans your journey according to your preferences: the quickest mobility mix, most comfortable, lowest emission, lowest number of transfers. It also takes care of the cumbersome formalities: booking rides, paying for them, and tracking overall mobility cost. It’s a personal mobility assistant that makes using multimodal transport as simple and relaxing as satnav has made using private transport.
But what’s simple for the consumer is an enormous technical and organizational challenge for the businesses trying to realize it. For starters, all modes of transport, from public trains, buses and trams, to bike, moped and car sharing plans must be integrated into one application.
Above: To raise awareness of the MaaS app Glimble, for one day only Arriva users in Amsterdam could book a trip on a submarine Right: Glimble users can book, pay and unlock micromobility rides with bike and e-bike share operators such as Hopperpoint and Urbee (pictured) Cooperation and competition
To start the ball rolling, on November 9, 2017, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water
Management issued an open letter for a market consultation. And in May 2019, a workgroup convened to develop an open standard: the TOMP-API (Operator to Mobility Provider – Application Programming Interface). This interface should make it easier for the mobility- and MaaS-providers to communicate with each other. The ministry called for seven pilot projects. The first one, Gaiyo in the city of Utrecht, was launched on September 17, 2020. Arriva, a Deutsche Bahn subsidiary running some of the trains, trams and buses in the Netherlands, won two of the other pilots: in the provinces of
Groningen/Drenthe and Limburg.
Open data sharing
Arriva launched its MaaS-app called Glimble for these pilot regions in August 2021. Immediately available for the whole country, it was developed together with Moovit, a major MaaS player worldwide, according to Arriva’s Martijn van de Weijer, who is director of the Glimble project: “They have the experience,” he says.
All public transport has been deep integrated into the app, meaning Glimble can perform all the planning, booking and paying. The traveller uses just this one app to access all the transport modes needed for the journey.
Surprisingly rival train and bus operators didn’t decline facilitating Arriva’s MaaS-app. “The government has prevented that by obliging everyone to make their data available,” van de Weijer comments. Operational data that is, personal consumer data will not be shared, since this information is protected by the EU-wide General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Amber shared cars, and Urbee and Hopperpoint shared bikes will soon be deep integrated as well. Uber and more than half a dozen other mobility providers have only been deep link integrated, meaning that if the
The Rivier platform connects MaaS providers with mobility providers and provides planning, booking, account management, id-verification and payment functionalities. But it’s up to the app builder of the MaaS provider which features to use and how to use them
Above: Amber, a shared- car provider offering on-demand mobility with electric cars, is integrated into the Amaze MaaS app Above right: Amber guarantees that there will always be a car available at the time requested by its users traveller wants to use any of these, he’s forwarded to the mobility provider’s app. But Van de Weijer states: “We’re working on further improvement and development. Every few weeks we release new functionalities or integrations in the app. We learn by customer feedback and with every new release, the app is evolving and expanding.”
National and international
Laws can make or break MaaS-apps. The Covid-19 pandemic, for example, caused a change in Dutch tax laws regarding travel expenses, which can help MaaS-adoption. “That change will cause a lot more paperwork for employers,” says Van de Weijer. “We can obviate that with Glimble. The employer can offer Glimble to their employees. Then they don’t have to buy, prepay and declare tickets anymore. And Glimble provides a travel summary for bookkeeping, with mileage, cost and CO2emissions specified. The employer can choose which transportation modes to offer, for example excluding the car if there are sustainability
A mobility provider’s viewpoint
Felyx, a provider of shared scooters, doesn’t have its own MaaS-app, but is already integrated into the Amaze and Glimble apps. “We’re talking to various pilots and MaaS-providers,” says Felyx’s public affairs associate, Nigel van den Berg. “MaaS should make multimodal travel more accessible, so more people can abandon the car. It’s difficult to get people out of their cars. That’s our goal: so they don’t take the car into the city anymore. I do think MaaS still has a long way to go, but the Ministry took the right step by launching those pilots. And the TOMP-API should help. The challenge is always to have systems communicate with each other and make good agreements about who’s responsible for what.”
Felyx was founded in 2016 and placed the first 100 scooters in Amsterdam in 2017. Now they have 6,000 scooters in 12 cities in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.
Nigel van den Berg, public affairs associate, Felyx
Top: Glimble provides real-time arrival information for buses and trains Above: Users of Glimble can use mobile payment for all public and shared transport countrywide goals. Pay is as you go, but we also have a postpay option for employers: pay once per month pay option for employers: pay once per month for all travelling.” for all travelling.”
The app will cater to the private car as well, The app will cater to the private car as well, aiding with parking and charging. And it’s been aiding with parking and charging. And it’s been extended to work in the whole country. “Of extended to work in the whole country. “Of course, we also want to cross the border with course, we also want to cross the border with Glimble,” Van de Weijer says. “Our trains in Glimble,” Van de Weijer says. “Our trains in Limburg cross the border into Germany and are Limburg cross the border into Germany and are already available in Glimble. Together with our already available in Glimble. Together with our German partners we’re working on expanding German partners we’re working on expanding our cross-border functionalities. Arriva Group our cross-border functionalities. Arriva Group runs public transport in 14 countries.” runs public transport in 14 countries.” app by a provider that doesn’t have its own mobility. “We don’t have wheels on the ground,” says Amaze’s Karin Sijbring. “Our goal is to make flexible travel as simple as possible.”
Again, some mobility providers are still deep linked, while others have already been deep integrated. “For example, you can directly book, use and pay for Donkey Republic bikes and Amber cars with our app,” says Sijbring. “And it allows you to directly buy tickets for trains,
No wheels
Amaze, launched on October 1, 2021, is a MaaSapp by a provider that doesn’t have its own mobility. “We don’t have wheels on the ground,” says Amaze’s Karin Sijbring. “Our goal is to make flexible travel as simple as possible.”
Again, some mobility providers are still deep linked, while others have already been deep integrated. “For example, you can directly book, use and pay for Donkey Republic bikes and Amber cars with our app,” says Sijbring. “And it allows you to directly buy tickets for trains, buses and trams, display the QR-code on the screen and check in with it. We also have a ‘Near me’-option: if your ride of choice has just left, you can quickly get an alternative.” A travel summary can be sent at the end of the month, and the app has been extended to cover the entire country. “The company was founded, triggered by the pilot to keep Zuidas, an Amsterdam business district, accessible,” Sijbring continues. “But you can’t serve Zuidas exclusively because people who work there live in the whole country.”
Changing behaviour
The MaaS-app providers are competing heavily to create the best service, which can only benefit the traveller. Has a mobility revolution been sparked? “If you tell people what you’re working on, they’re generally excited,” Sijbring says. “But you do have to explain it: Amaze is more than a journey planner. You can book, buy and use public transport and shared mobility in the app. MaaS requires a change in behaviour. But not everyone can park in front of their house anymore, so shared mobility is stimulated in other ways as well. And then it’s very convenient not to have to look at five different apps.”
“I had to get used to it myself,” Arriva’s Martijn van de Weijer comments. “I was used to planning my trip according to public transport departure times. Now, I can plan my journey by the time I plan to leave.”
Martijn van de Weijer, director, Glimble, Arriva
Alexander Sprey, senior manager of strategic partnerships, Tier Mobility, Berlin
Above: Using Moovit’s technology, Glimble combines official information from all Dutch transport agencies, as well as crowdsourced information to calculate the best route for each journey using options such as bus, rail, tram, underground, ferry, taxi, Uber, car share, scooters, and bikes More MaaS-apps
Others are getting into the MaaS-game as well. NS, HTM and RET (The largest Dutch rail company and the companies running trams and busses in The Hague and Rotterdam) together founded the company Rivier to commission Siemens to build not an app, but an integrated platform to build MaaS-apps on.
“The Rivier platform connects MaaS providers with mobility providers and provides planning, booking, account management, id-verification and payment functionalities,” Siemens’ digital transformation officer for the Netherlands, Emilio Tuinenburg, comments. “But it’s up to the app builder of the MaaS provider which features to use and how to use them. They can for example choose to offer pay as you go or subscriptions.”
Rivier didn’t spring from the pilot projects. It will be rolled out in the entire country, with the option of extending it abroad. “The first apps will probably be by NS, RET and HTM as they requested the platform,” Tuinenburg comments. “But every app builder can build their own MaaS-app using our platform. We can provide a white label app for you, for example, but most mobility providers already have an app and would prefer to extend that to MaaS. For that they can use our facilities.”
Experience from Berlin
W“ e started in 2018 and have grown to 135,000 vehicles in 160 cities in 16 countries in Europe and the Middle East,” says Alexander Sprey, senior manager of strategic partnerships for Tier Mobility, a Berlin startup offering shared e-bikes, e-mopeds and e-scooters. He likes the approach of Siemens’ Rivier platform to MaaS. “Rivier isn’t an app, but an infrastructure MaaS-operators and mobility providers can dock onto: that’s good!
We get many requests from MaaS-apps to integrate us. That’s a lot of work to figure out technical integration and contracts, and discuss finance, accounting and customer support.
“Standardization helps. One integration with Rivier and we’re integrated with all MaaSapps that use the platform. It’s a promising approach. We’re already integrated into nearly 40 MaaS-apps worldwide. Our mission to ‘Change Mobility for Good’ is one we cannot achieve alone,” Sprey adds.
“To create a better-connected tomorrow and change the mobility sector, we aim to connect our sustainable micro-mobility solutions with public transport by integrating them into local MaaS solutions,” he continues. “There are good local apps already: Jelbi in Berlin for example. Still, we only see a small percentage of our rides coming through applications like Jelbi. Why if it’s so convenient is customer adoption so low?”
In other cities with MaaS-apps, Paris and Munich for example, Tier sees equally low customer adoption. That could be because travellers haven’t got used to it yet. But Tier has also identified that for a MaaS-app to be used, all available travel options have to be in there and they all have to be deep integrated. Because as Sprey says: “On average, our deep integrations generate 30x more ridership than deep link integrations.” (I.e., for MaaS to work everything needs to be in one app, not simply via links that send you do another app). Lowering barriers
Forty mobility providers have shown interest in being integrated into Rivier so far. “We’re integrating bike, moped and car sharing providers,” Tuinenburg explains. “And we expect to connect assets such as Park+Ride and electric car charging.”
Private transport will also be integrated. “Then the customer can compare their own means of transportation with others, or the car can be incorporated into the journey,” Tuinenburg continues. “Lowering barriers this way will persuade consumers to use other modes of transport, so they don’t have to use the car all the time.”
The Rivier-platform is a flexible and ambitious plan, but Tuinenburg reckons it will be up and running soon: “We’ve been involved with this technology for a long time. Of course, the configuration is specific for the Netherlands, but the first apps could be available in the spring of 2022,” he says.
So, it’s a question of may the best app win? “Yes,” comments Tuinenburg. “But I’m convinced eventually there won’t be just one app that appeals to everyone. You could need different functionalities for different target groups. An app that can do everything can be confusing. And the business market could prefer a different app than elderly people with walking difficulties, for example.” n
