seven answers from Beat brühwiler

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

Although collaborative mobility turned into a trend term - especially during the last few months - , it is not a new concept at all. Already since decades people organize themselves in carpools. But in point of fact, it needs something like a revolution to change the mobility behaviour fundamentally. And that is, what „collaborative mobility“ stands for.

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

Personally I wish, people would again give more importance to a reasonable proximity between home, workplace and leisure time activities. With this, mobility would become less significant than anticipated. 

I lived many years in Tokyo, a mega-city which is often called the „window to the future“. Against this background I would describe my dream mobility scenario as one, where cities are neither fully covered in concrete, nor have people commuting for hours in any means of transport. More or less the way we have it in Switzerland today :-).

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

For me, this moment hasn’t arrived yet: The average of occupancy of a running car is still below two people and the coming traffic collapse is nearly daily a topic in the media. The success story of collaborative mobility need thus to be written yet.

My personal mobility behavior: How I move privately

Through our product, Fundride, I have realised, how expensive private-owned automotive mobility really is. For financial reasons I am often either using public transport or share a ride as a passanger in the car of friends.

Job-related, public transport is the only option for me, because here I can work on the go.

Of course I also enjoy from time to time the individuality and the comfort of the own car. But I try to share it as often as possible with friends and organise carpools – again, basically, to save costs.

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

That is, the first time I carpooled - over one of the numerous online platforms – in order to do a city trip. Although I was in contact with the driver during the day, I spent a few doubtful minutes at the arranged place, since the car did not arrive at the arranged time nor did the driver respond on his mobile phone. But after 20 minutes, the driver appeared and the journey was extremely enriching.

This experience shows, that this form of mobility, based on blind trust in foreign people, probably never will be ready for mass-implementation. In my case, it turned out all right and I am a big fan of ridesharing since.

The incident that sparked my interest in shared mobility solutions:

In my prior job, I was involved in a service, that collected traffic-information and distributed the results to end-users via mobile phones. While my colleagues focused on upgrading the service so paying users could better avoid traffic jams, I realized that the real problem – the traffic overload – would never be solved this way.

After a short research it became clear to me, that there is another very effective solution: The increase of the occupancy of driving cars. At the same time, I became aware of the fact, that ridesharing was the only form of mobility, which is perceived in our society as free of charge. This is very astonishing, in consideration of the reaction in public due to any increase of costs concerning public transport or road traffic.

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

I would invest the money that politicians allocate to the infrastructural development of streets – probably strongly influenced by certain lobbyists in collaborative mobility. With this money, we had immediately unlimited options to bring the needed mobility revolution about and to bring the essential, sustainable change.