Podcast: Exploring the state of shared and zero-emission mobility in Europe

C: I’m here with Martin Baierl, our Data Analyst and lead author on the report Thank you for Sharing. Martin, tell us what the most interesting thing was that jumped out at you when you were creating this report?

M: There were actually quite a few surprises. So, for instance, looking at zero-emission buses, we saw that quite a few cities are on track to achieve zero-emission public transport by 2030, which is quite ambitious. 

Cities like Oslo or Copenhagen are really on track to achieve that. Especially Oslo, which has become a bit famous in that sense because, by the end of this year, they will actually have (in the city area) a zero emission bus fleet – the first city in Europe and maybe even worldwide to achieve that.

C: What led to those cities making progress on zero emission buses?

M: Of course, you always need some funding. You need enough funding to actually purchase those buses, for instance, but also to establish infrastructure. But what’s maybe even more important is to have the political will to stick with your choice and to go through and implement the changes that you need while also being consistent as an administration. 

Also, working with private operators and the public to, on the one hand, make sure that the left hand doesn’t destroy what the right hand does and on the other hand, work with everyone and make sure that everyone is working on the same objective together, rather than each their own, which doesn’t lead to the same results.

C: Do you have examples where authorities have maybe backed the wrong technology?

M: Unfortunately there’s, in our view, at least quite a few of those. One famous example would be Madrid, which recently claimed to have achieved a 100% clean bus fleet. That was quite surprising. 

Looking into it, you realised that a large chunk of the so-called clean buses were CNG. So natural gas buses, which by now we know are not much cleaner than diesel buses and only a small share were actually electric. 

So that was something that looked great on the press release, but now seeing it probably means that the city will have to invest a lot of money into switching over again from CNG to electric buses. A lot of other cities did the right thing and just invested in battery electric buses as soon as it was possible. And now they are reaping the benefits of making the right choice.

C: Zero-emission buses can make quite a quick change to cities’ progress. What is it about the buses that allows them to show impact quickly?

M: Well, as soon as you have the buses and you install the charging infrastructure they will be operating and they will immediately cut the emissions, reduce noise levels and also usually end up being cheaper to operate. So that’s three benefits that you already have really quickly, as soon as they are purchased.

Electric buses are not that rare anymore, so they are being produced really in large numbers. Even in Europe itself, as soon as you have them on the roads, you reap all the benefits. And, given that a lot of people use public transport in all these cities, that’s big numbers immediately. 

The other important thing is that those buses usually then drive in city centres where emissions are already high, where air pollution is already a big issue and they provide immediate relief.

C: One of the other things you looked at was car sharing and how many of those cars are electric vehicles. Who’s doing well on electric vehicle car sharing?

M: As a general rule, we saw that most cities that do well in car sharing also do well on EVs. That was the case for cities like Oslo, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, but also Ghent and Hamburg. In addition to that, you also have cities where you might not know, but they do quite a lot on car sharing and they also did quite well on EV car sharing. So, for instance, Ljubljana has quite a high number of shared EVs per capita.

C: You mentioned Hamburg there. What did Hamburg do to promote electric car sharing?

M: They did something quite interesting. They actually have an agreement with the car sharing operators and they decided to work together. 

Hamburg is committed to rolling out more EV charging points and charging infrastructure for the car sharing operators. And, in turn, the car sharing operators agreed to achieve an EV share of 80% which is a very high number. It’s very ambitious. 

So far this agreement seems to be working because basically it’s a win-win situation where both the city, the operators and the users will benefit from the changes and are working together to achieve the objective.

C: Did you find, in general, the operators were kind of pushing hard on this, that they wanted to go faster and transition their fleets more quickly?

M: Definitely. The operators seem to be interested in pushing and shifting more quickly to EVs. Usually it’s also in their interest. If the overall costs of operating are lower for electric vehicles, then that’s another incentive for them to shift. 

But there are also cases like Bucharest and Sofia where there was only one operator that rolled out a fleet of shared EVs and this single operator managed to provide a really decent amount of shared EVs in the cities without much support from the authorities.

C: So it’s not necessarily that the charging infrastructure is lacking, it’s if the operators want to go along with it as well?

M: Usually it’s both. You need the charging infrastructure, of course, but you also need the will to roll out a fleet or a business that is interested in rolling out a fleet. Ideally you do both at the same time. You roll out the charging infrastructure and also you provide charging infrastructure to the operators.

C: What trends did you see in relation to shared bikes and e-scooters? They’re much smaller and easier to deploy. Did you see that things are changing more quickly?

M: Change is definitely happening very quickly when it comes to shared bikes and e-scooters, but it’s also been going in both directions. 

You have some cities that recently, the case of Paris has become quite famous, where they effectively ended e-scooter sharing in the city. On the other hand, you have a lot of cities where bigger fleets are being added every day, but then approaches differ a lot between cities. 

Some cities now try to properly regulate the fleets, limit the numbers or make sure that they are not causing any road safety hazards, and other cities are just trying to increase the numbers. But, at the end, you will need some regulation, you need some proper enforcement of the rules. Once that’s done, you can actually have a working e-scooter fleet and a working bike sharing fleet that contributes to the city’s mobility mix.

C: Do you think the reasons for that may be that the scooters and the bikes just look like a quick, easy fix for city leaders? What does that help you to conclude on the importance of political will for what cities are going to look like?

M: Well, as a leader of a city you need to have a vision of what you want to achieve. And if you just roll out something without thinking about how this contributes to the wider mobility system, you’re not going to go very far. 

That’s why it’s good to see that cities are now trying to think about public transport and shared mobility together. For instance, the roll out of mobility hubs in some cities where there’s a conscious effort to develop at neighbourhood level a hub or a station where you have public transport, EV charging infrastructure and different forms of shared mobility, be it bike sharing or e-scooters, so that people can access both forms of mobility conveniently and can also seamlessly change from one mode to another.

C: What do cities need to employ if they want to make those mobility hubs work?

M: Most importantly, you need to properly plan where you want to have your stations and what they actually need to provide. You need to provide services that people in the neighbourhood want to have. And you also need to make sure that it actually works because very often cities roll out something and then after a few weeks, months or years, it’s not really working as intended anymore. 

I think two good examples are Berlin and Vienna. In Berlin, it’s called Jelbi. And in Vienna, it’s called WienMobil. Both are somewhat similar concepts, but they both provide all these mobility services and connection to public transport in the neighbourhoods and they have started to build a full network of these while also maintaining them over time.

C: When reading the research there were a couple of cities that jumped out as ones that people might expect were doing well and didn’t do so well, such as Madrid and London. What did you see in some of these bigger cities that was not going so well?

M: Those are actually two interesting examples because, as you say, they’re big and they’re the capital. So usually that’s where a lot of the good new stuff is being rolled out first and where cities are keen to show what they can do. 

In London, we mostly saw that there is still a lack of shared EVs and EV charging infrastructure compared to other big European cities. In Madrid it was actually more down to the shared bikes and e-scooters. A new system was rolled out, but there were problems with the bikes being stolen or abandoned because the systems weren’t working as intended. And also the overall number, given the big size of Madrid, was not very impressive. In addition to that, as mentioned previously, the zero emission buses are still in fairly low numbers mostly because of the investment in natural gas buses.

C: It sounds to me that one of the lessons to be drawn from this is there are no quick, easy solutions, i.e. flooding a city with lots of ebikes. You need to have political will, you need to have planning and you need to think about the city’s transport system as a whole.

M: Yes, that would also be my summary. I think you need to be consistent, you need to have a clear vision, you need to have the political leadership and will and you need to have commitment. And, of course, you also need to work with the people in your city, with the citizens, with the operators, with the authorities. And only then you can actually make big changes.