Sustainable transport solutions: Mobility hubs – part 1

Let me introduce you to a new-old concept. Not as new-old as having your milk or groceries delivered on a bicycle, but nonetheless one that has been around for at least two decades.

This is the mobility hub – a place where sustainable transport options come together. Rather than just integrating rail and bus services (of course a good thing), we are talking here about weaving active travel facilities into the mix. Alongside that, perhaps the newest new/old element: shared transport schemes, such as pay-as-you-go bikes and e-bikes, cars and e-scooters.

Such hubs are now widespread in a number of European countries, particularly Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway – and spreading fast in North America too. They present a flexible concept in terms of scale and geography. They range from the modest – a bus stop with bicycle parking, some seating and planting – to the very large. They can be urban, suburban, peri-urban or rural.

The great beauty of mobility hubs is twofold. First, they bring together a variety of sustainable transport options in one identifiable, pleasant place. Secondly, they empower decision-makers to move the goalposts away from privately owned and lightly occupied cars towards better air quality, less parking and congestion, and accelerated decarbonisation. Why not put the hub in a parking space? Why not repurpose part of a car park? Why not design and build more pleasant residential developments, without sacrificing density, by providing less overall car parking? Why not incentivise people to use the hub and its options and disincentivise the use of private cars?

The devil, it is said, has the best tunes. One can draw a parallel with the private car here. Especially away from dense urban cores (which cover a tiny fraction of the built environment) the private car offers drivers enormous flexibility. It requires very little transactional thought once purchased or leased. The marginal cost of driving day-to-day is very small compared to the larger costs of ownership, so value is best extracted through regular use. To wean people off the car, we must make access to, and use of, alternatives as convenient, pleasant and cheap as possible.

The term mobility hub is a shorthand: many important aspects of mobility hubs are about stasis rather than movement. COVID-19 has and will continue to accelerate this trend. Suddenly, millions of people are working from home and consequently looking anew at the facilities in their community. There is a renewed interest in living away from urban areas. In these instances, we must plan community hubs that not only bring together sustainable transport options, but also provide other amenities. Cafés, community spaces, remote working hubs and healthcare facilities all form part of the equation.

We need not just think about the passenger side of transport here either. Some hub sites will be natural homes for delivery pick-up and drop-off lockers. There is already strong interest in the UK in co-locating mobility hubs with logistics consolidation sites – whether at micro or macro level, or both.

We at Collaborative Mobility UK (CoMoUK), the national charity in the UK for the public benefit of shared transport, have produced an introductory guide to mobility hubs. We also run a quarterly networking meeting for interested parties across the UK’s regions and key industrial sectors. Furthermore, we have produced accreditation standards for hubs and, as I write, are progressing our first site assessment.  

In a future piece, I will turn my thinking to some of the practical considerations around mobility hubs, and how to approach them.

Richard Dilks is CEO of CoMoUK, a charity advocating for collaborative, fair and sustainable mobility and the creation of better communities.
Email: richard@como.org.uk