seven Answers from: Alain Brügger

Statement: What I always wanted to tell the world about collaborative mobility

If one observes today’s traffic problems in a purely rational manner the true problems get quite obvious: Whereas too many people are crammed in the same train on the one hand, too few sit in the same car on the other. Investing more and more in an infrastructural expanse under this pretext and not support co-mobility services – even forbid them in extreme cases – is not reconcilable with the agenda of an economically, ecologically and socially oriented mobility policy.

Dream scenario: How I wish the mobile world looks like in 2060 

People are recognizing the advantages of shared individual transport. Ridesharing – also for short distances – forms part of everyday professional and private mobility and is a broadly accepted means of transport. On top of this, noise- and pollutant emission-free urban transport will replace the petrol-based traffic.

My TOP-moment: In my eyes the biggest success in the history of collaborative mobility

Of course, the first world collaborative mobility congress „wocomoco“ in 2013 in Lucerne, Switzerland. For the first the relevant stakeholders of the collaborative mobility sector met and discussed challenges and problems together. Thus, a milestone was achieved in the future development of collaborative mobility in participation and cooperation of several stakeholders. The work is, however, far from done: wocomoco wants to do its best to contribute the promotion of collaborative mobility in the future, too.

My personal mobility behavior: How I move privately

In private I move either by foot or by PT – but am also sharing an EV with my work colleagues. On occasion I also use ridesharing or rent a car using a carsharing operator.

Personal experiences with collaborative mobility: An incident which stayed in my mind

My first shared ride: I convinced my wife to join me on this adventure and we had two quite heavy suitcases with us. After finally reaching to appointed pick-up spot there was no driver to be seen anywhere. After calling him, he told me that he will be two hours late. As it turned out later he had sent an SMS to the wrong number. Luckily, we were in no hurry, drank a coffee and were then escorted to our destination quite comfortably.

This experience, however, shows that there are still some inherent problems to collaborative mobility solutions. Reliability is an important factor to bring P2P-based mobility (and other) services to the broad public. But I am happy to see many operators tackling these exact issues – even if the meet sometimes quite harsh criticism.

The incident that sparked my interest in shared mobility solutions:

After my boss told me of his idea to have the first world congress on collaborative mobility, I was not very familiar with the potential of such mobility services. After a short time of gathering knowledge and experience, however, I was truly convinced of the goodness that is shared mobility. Now I feel I want to actively contribute to and promote these new mobility- and lifestyles.

Ready for action: If I could, I would next…

…remove all political and juridical barriers that currently prevent collaborative mobility from being the success it deserves to be.