Mobility has been massively disrupted by new-generation telecoms and mobile apps, which
allow an optimised utilisation of both transport means and infrastructures. When it comes to
this kind of mobility, transport authorities and ‘traditional’ transport planning can only do
little. Citizens step in and fill in the gaps at neighbourhood level by co-creating mobility
solutions, as they already own or have at their disposal enough assets to work with: private
and commercial vehicles, tracking and geo-location capabilities, smart communication
devices, a transportation infrastructure grid and so on.
Without additional investment in physical assets for marginal uses of the infrastructure, and
without adding more vehicles to the streets, it becomes possible to ‘kick start’ a new mobility
‘metabolism’ through collaborative solutions that concatenate several ‘sharing’ approaches:
car-pooling, car-sharing, crowd-parking, bike-sharing, cargo-pooling, data-sharing.
In sum, crowd-sourcing and shared-economy ideas are turbo-charged by new technologies.
Such technologies can bridge social capital and citizen power with the valuable aspects of
free market economics. In addition, crowd-sourcing mobility solutions seem to make
economic sense and bring democratic thinking and environmental conscience. But are they
financially sustainable?
