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Transport Research Arena 2014, Paris
New mobility concepts: myth or emerging reality?
Wolfgang Schade
a
, Michael Krail
a
, André Kühn
a*
a
Fraunhofer Institute Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, Germany
Abstract
Urban mobility seems to be at the edge of a transition towards a new mobility concept. Transport users will not
buy and own a car anymore. Rather they will have a contract with a mobility service provider that will fulfil the
whole variety of urban mobility needs, including offering the users shared cars. This concept is nowhere fully
implemented, yet. However, the building blocks of such a concept seem to form in Europe, in Asia and even in
some US cities. The paper describes such a new urban mobility concept based on sharing-instead-of-owning. It
eplains the status of the emerging building blocks that form such an urban mobility concept. New mobility
options, ICT technologies both on front-end applications (smart-phones, key card systems for vehicles) and on
back-end (reservation and payment systems) seem currently to become available. However, the market is still
forming, but with some public transport operators, most car-manufacturers and large system operators setting-up
mobility service schemes the competition is driving the development of a new mobility concept. It seems to us
that transport research has largely neglected the emergence of such new mobility concepts. We are lacking
behavioural studies e.g. on how a user would perform modal choice in such new concept, as well as modelling
studies providing us with impacts on transport demand.
Keywords: seamless multimodal travel, fifth mode, car-/ bike-sharing, public transport, innovation system.
Résumé
La mobilité urbaine est à la veille d'une transition vers un nouveau concept de mobilité. La consommation de
transport ne sera plus conditionnée par l’achat ou la propriété d’une voiture. Au lieu de cela, elle sera basée sur
un contrat avec un fournisseur de services répondant à l’ensemble des besoins de mobilité urbaine, y compris
ceux basés sur l’utilisation partagée de l’automobile (car-sharing). A ce jour, ce concept n'est pleinement mis en
œuvre nulle part, mais il émerge par morceaux en Europe, en Asie et même dans certaines villes américaines. Le
document décrit ce nouveau concept de mobilité urbaine concept basé sur le partage de préférence à la
possession, et il décrit l’état actuel des différents constituants de ce concept qui deviennent actuellement
disponibles: nouvelles options de mobilité, nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication tant
dans leurs applications frontales (smart-phones, systèmes de carte clé – key card - pour les véhicules) qu’en
arrière-plan (systèmes de réservation et systèmes de paiement). Certes, le marché est toujours en phase de
formation, mais l’émergence du nouveau concept est poussée par la concurrence entre d’une part certains
exploitants de services de transport public, d’autre part la plupart des constructeurs automobiles et enfin
quelques opérateurs de grands systèmes. Les auteurs estiment que la recherche sur les transports a largement
négligé ce phénomène: il manque à la fois des études comportementales - portant par exemple sur le choix modal
face à ce nouveau concept de mobilité-, et des études de modélisation évaluant l’impact du concept sur la
demande de transport.
Mots-clé: transport multimodal, cinquième mode, auto-partage, vélo-partage, les transports publics, système
d'innovation.
*
Corresponding author. Tel.:+49 721 6809 353; fax: +49 721 6809 135.
E-mail address: wolfgang.schade@isi.fraunhofer.de.
Wolfgang Schade et al. / Transport Research Arena 2014, Paris 2
1. Introduction
Passenger transport nearly always is intermodal. Passenger trips start by foot, than may change to bike, car,
public transport or long distance transport means. Such trip chains have been researched for long and their
implementation was promoted by European, national and urban policy-makers, in particular with regard to foster
sustainable mobility by modal-shift away from cars towards alternative modes. Some cities were successful and
increased substantially their modal-share of public transport or bikes. However, still private car transport
dominates in many cities and much more in surrounding areas. Obviously though tackled, the barriers for further
improvement of intermodal transport like insufficient interchanges, lack of multimodal information, fragmented
ticketing systems, lack of flexibility and comfort present an obstacle for such multimodal transport becoming the
dominating passenger transport paradigm.
However, will this remain in the future? Or can we identify signals for a true multimodal transport paradigm
emerging? In this paper we will argue that urban mobility seems to be at the edge of a transition towards a new
mobility concept, which could constitute such a paradigm shift. Transport users within a wider agglomeration
area would not need to buy and own a car anymore. Rather they would have a contract with a mobility provider
that will fulfil the whole variety of urban mobility needs, including offering them shared cars. This multimodal
one-stop-shop services concept is nowhere fully implemented, yet. However, the building blocks of such a
concept seem to form in Europe, in Asia and even in some US cities, despite that for these regions different
passenger transport demand developments can be expected due to the differences in drivers of transport demand.
Many European countries are facing an ageing society and a declining population, both leading to stagnating or
even declining passenger transport demand in the next decades. Inward migration, a younger population and
higher birth rates than in Europe are expected to further increase population in the US also continuing the growth
trend of passenger transport demand. Asia is also expected to experience strong transport demand growth,
though improvement of economic situation, and related growth in car-ownership in several Asian countries, will
be the more important driver than population growth.
This paper describes the emerging multimodal one-stop-shop urban mobility concept that will be based on
sharing-instead-of-owning. It explains the building blocks of such an urban mobility concept and uses the
heuristic of technical innovation systems (TIS) to demonstrate that such a multimodal concept is emerging today,
at least in Germany.
In the paper we use the term “multimodal” also to indicate that the users change their behaviour from being
focussed on the use of a single mode, which was in most cases the private automobile, to developing a true
multimodal behaviour that exhibits a flexible choice of transport mode let it be public transport, bike-sharing,
car-sharing, ride-sharing, rental cars potentially also in combination with private vehicles i.e. cars or bikes.
2. Building blocks – new and existing ones
There are several acknowledged strategy approaches to develop sustainable urban mobility. Important strategic
planning objectives emphasize to plan for a city enabling short distance trips (“Stadt der kurzen Wege”) in which
public transport is able to form the backbone of urban passenger transport and to ensure that city (growth) is
developing along the public transport axes. Corresponding strategic sustainable transport objectives can be
summarized as avoid – shift – improve, i.e. avoid travel e.g. by shorter distances, shift it to the environmental
friendly modes and improve the efficiency of the remaining transport (see also Schade et al. 2011).
New Mobility Concepts constitute an additional strategic approach to foster sustainable mobility. External
drivers and technological progress push the emergence of building blocks that only together will form the new
mobility concepts. Essential external drivers seem to be the increase of mobility cost driven by growing fossil
fuel prices as well as demographic change leading to both a growing share of elderly people with specific
transport needs but also a growing number of young people grown up with the internet and smartphones
(“Digital Natives”). Important new building blocks are: (1) new usage concepts summarized as sharing-instead-
of-owning, (2) small (electric) vehicles, (3) new business models and new players as mobility service providers
as well as finally (4) new information and communication technology (ICT), which are briefly discussed in the
following sections.
Wolfgang Schade et al. / Transport Research Arena 2014, Paris
2.1. New usage concepts – sharing-instead-of-owning
The keynote theme of the global computer fare CeBIT this year (2013) was “Shareconomy”. This highlights the
growing importance of the new usage concept of sharing-instead-of-owning as a first building block of new
mobility concepts. In the mobility domain the concept becomes visible by three well known mobility services:
Bike-sharing offers public bikes usually at fixed stations (a few flexible schemes exist) and requires purchase
of annual or short-term usage passes to take a bike and return it at any of the stations, usually then being for
free the first 30 minutes of bike-usage. Maintenance of bikes is organized by the operator. In Europe such
systems became popular with the opening and success of the Paris “Velib” bike sharing in 2007, though
similar schemes date back until 1998 in Rennes. In the US 2013 could be the year when bike-sharing took off
with doubling of number of shared bikes over the year by opening up of schemes e.g. in New York, Chicago,
Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, the biggest bike-share schemes with more than 50.000 bikes in one
city are operated in China today.
Car-sharing enables for registered members of the scheme to take cars that are either based at fixed stations
where they have to be returned to as well (station-based systems) or that are based within a designated area in
which they can be picked-up and parked at any location within the area (flexible systems). The operator (or
the owner in case of private car-sharing) is responsible for maintenance of the vehicle. Some schemes enable
only short rental durations (hours or a few days), while others also enable to take a car for holiday trips (i.e.
for several weeks). Schemes may offer only a few vehicle types (e.g. only urban vehicles like Smarts) or the
whole range from small urban vehicles to nine-seater buses. The latter provides a high flexibility for users
with differing transport needs.
Ride-sharing (or car-pooling) allows to share a unique ride (e.g. a longer trip between two cities) or regular
trips (e.g. to work, which is then rather car-pooling). Today the driver offers the trip at an online platform and
registered users are able to approach the driver and make a reservation for the trip.
Car-sharing and bike-sharing both profit from the capabilities of new ICT to allow for ad-hoc bookings of
vehicles. Even ad-hoc ride-sharing becomes possible i.e. a driver entering his car, making his offer of a trip from
A to B and immediately finding passengers who would join and pay him for part of that trip from C to D or B.
Also relevant for the success of ride-sharing schemes will be the habit of Digital natives to participate in social
networks and to generate trust by rating systems, which can also be applied to drivers/users of ride-sharing.
Of course, cost is most often an argument for participating in such sharing systems. However, also flexibility and
comfort gain importance as arguments. Flexibility for instance as always the best suiting car could be used, like a
convertible car for a trip in the sun or a nine-seater for the weekend family and relatives trip. Comfort as all
maintenance (oil, tyres, etc.) is organised by car-sharing operators (Adler 2011).
2.2. Small (electric) vehicles
In the past there were rather clear borders between different vehicle types, in particular the bike and the car. The
bike was a non-motorised vehicle to carry one person as far as he/she was feeling comfortable with, usually a
few kilometres in rather flat area. The car was motorised and enabled higher speeds and longer distances, but
required significant road space and weighed 1-3 tons. Today different kinds of small electric vehicles may satisfy
usage profiles located between the car and the bike, let it be pedelecs (i.e. bikes with support of an electric motor
and limited speed), electric scooters, segways, two- or three seater electric urban vehicles (see Fig. 1). Such
vehicles form another building block as they could alter mobility patterns both when they become used in private
ownership or when they become part of vehicle-sharing systems.
Fig. 1. Small electric vehicles: twike, twizzy, segway, kick-trike, e-tuc-tuc (photos: WS)
Wolfgang Schade et al. / Transport Research Arena 2014, Paris 4
2.3. New business models and new players
Widespread adoption of sharing concepts and of new electric vehicles requires viable business models as the
third building block to develop innovative mobility concepts. Before innovative solutions become successful on
markets one can observe various business models to emerge, some of them surviving and expanding, others
collapsing and disappearing again. The situation seems to differ for bike-sharing and car-sharing. For bike-
sharing the large majority of operators set-up station-based systems at which the bikes have to be taken either by
using a smart card or by entering a code at the stations. A few operators were implementing a flexible system
with booking and opening of bikes via mobile phones, like the DB with the call-a-bike system starting in 2001.
But, also the DB is testing the system with fixed stations in several of their cities. Thus it seems that stations-
based systems like in Paris, Barcelona, Milan or Brussels emerge today as successful business model from the
niche of bike-sharing systems.
For car-sharing the situation differs. Car-sharing systems of the early 1990ies were often set-up as co-operations
of private persons in some cases involving also the administration of their home city. Since then, some of them
developed successfully into private businesses keeping their approach of a station-based system and forming
networks of cooperating local car-sharing companies covering some dozen cities in Germany (e.g. Stadtmobil,
Cambio or Greenwheels) or in the US and the UK (e.g. ZipCar). Cars in such a classical system can be used by
registered users who paid an annual fee and for each rental time-related cost and distance-related cost are
charged. The fleet offered in such systems may cover the whole varietey of passenger cars from the two-seater
Smart, to compact cars like Opel Corsa, station wagons like Opel Astra Kombi, limousines like Audi A4 or nine
seaters like Mercedes Sprinter. These “classical” car-sharing systems have seen the start-up of competing
alternative systems. In particular the “flexible” car-sharing in which usually a standard fleet is operated (e.g. all
cars being Smarts) within a defined area in which the cars can be picked-up and returned at any location in the
area. Such systems were started for the public in Ulm in Germany in early 2009 followed by the second one in
Austin, Texas. This first system was Car2Go from Daimler. Due to the success of these first two trials the
Car2Go system was expanded to other cities in Germany, Europe and the US and a cooperation with Europcar
was initiated. At the beginning of 2013 Car2Go reported 275.000 registered users globally. Similar systems have
for instance been started by BMW (DriveNow) and Citroen (MultiCity), while Volkswagen (QuiCar) or Peugeot
(Mu) have started station-based systems. Today, nearly every car manufacturer has taken first steps to participate
at the growing car-sharing market, increasing the competition with established classical systems. In parallel, also
private car sharing (peer-to-peer) receives more support, but develops less dynamic than both the business driven
approaches. Also “focused” systems offering car-sharing at specific locations, in particular at railway stations,
develop further. However, as Flinkster, run by the Deutsche Bahn (DB), reveals these systems seems also to
expand towards a station-based system with further stations, at least in bigger and more attractive cities. An
overview on the diversity of car-sharing business models is presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Typology of car sharing business models (own compilation)
Type of car-
sharing Car locations Fleet composition Pre-booking
time Rental duration Maintenance Examples
Classical At stations, fixed Full range of
vehicle types Ad hoc Hours, weeks,
unlimited Operator Stadtmobil, Gambio,
QuiCar (VW)
Flexible In area, flexible Standard type of
vehicles Ad hoc Hours Operator Car2Go (Daimler),
DriveNow (BMW),
MultiCity (Citroen)
Private At homes, disperse Full range but
random mix Required
(days) Days, limited Private TaMyCa
Autonetzer
Focussed (Mostly) at train
stations Limited mix of
vehicle types Limited Days, weeks Operator Flinkster (DB),
Mobility
Short-term
rental At car rental
offices Limited mix of
vehicle types Hours Days, weeks Operator Europcar, Sixt
Wolfgang Schade et al. / Transport Research Arena 2014, Paris
Ride-sharing like organised by the German platform Mitfahrgelegenheit or the French Covoiturage also gained
importance. Covoiturage today has some 4 million registered users. New tools enable ad hoc sharing of rides,
like OpenRide. First offers that combine car-sharing with ride-sharing emerge as well, like DriveNow with flinc.
In general, all these approaches could complement public transport (PT) in a sense that they combine the time
table based PT with flexible mobility options for those trips too inconvenient or impossible with PT.
2.4. New ICT technologies
The fourth building block improving or even enabling at all the new sharing-based business models are ICT
technologies. Such technologies include hardware and software improvements. In particular smartphones and
specific mobility apps enable to obtain travel and vehicle information in real time, book tickets, reserve shared
vehicles or participate in ad hoc ride-sharing.
Together with new business models of a mobility service provider the new ICT technologies will support to
overcome the information barrier and the fragmentation barrier of past multimodal systems. The information
barrier concerns in particular that for a multimodal trip from A to B in the past the information systems of all
involved modes must have been consulted separately to elaborate a full plan of the trip. A new multimodal
service would provide timetable information and cost of all modes including also car- and bike-sharing (e.g.
http://www.qixxit.de/). Again, also car manufacturers started to develop such systems like Citroen
(http://www.multicity.citroen.de/). More difficult currently seem to be the fragmentation of ticketing and
payment systems, such that for a multimodal trip still for each mode a separate payment will have to be made.
Moderate steps forward have been made by railway operators like the DB who together with their long distance
ticket also offer a ticket for public transport in the German destination city.
3. Fifth mode – seamless integrated passenger transport
The first time that the Fifth mode appeared to us as a term in the EU policy scene was at the High Level
Conference on the Future of Transport in 2009. We would summarize it as seamless multimodal integrated
passenger transport enabled by a one-stop-shop mobility service provider (MSP), as shown in Fig. 2, who puts
together the different building blocks explained in the previous section. The MSP integrates the offer of the
different modes and either is one of the operators (for instance the PT operator) who has contracts with the other
operators or could be a newcomer in the mobility business like an IT company (e.g. IBM, SAP, Google) or
technology company (e.g. Siemens). The transport user would have one contract with an MSP and via the ICT-
based interface offered by the MSP could get all multimodal information for a trip from A to B, book tickets or
make reservations for all modes of the trip. After each month (or shorter period) the MSP would charge the user
for all its trips, independent with which mode they have been made.
Fig. 2. Building blocks of Fifth Mode enabled by the mobility service provider (own compilation)
Electric city vehicles
PT/Bike‐sharing
Car‐sharing
Newelectric
personaltransporters (PT)
Modernpublic transport
Quellen: privat, Unternehmens -Website
Ride‐sharing
MobilityCard
SmartPhone
Tab let ‐PC
Wolfgang Schade et al. / Transport Research Arena 2014, Paris 6
Most convenient for the transport user seems to be if a nationwide offer is provided by the MSP such that not
only in his/her home town the full mobility services are available, but also nationwide. However, looking at
ongoing developments in Germany it seems that regional and competing MSPs will develop. In Stuttgart and
Berlin the Daimler company is testing the multimodal service Moovel. It brings together the transport services of
the regional public transport company, Car2Go i.e. the car-sharing from Daimler, nextbike a bike-sharing
operator, mitfahrgelegenheit the ride-sharing operator and mytaxi the app to electronically order taxis. In Berlin
there is even a second MSP offering similar integrated services. Via the project BeMobility the BahnCard 25
mobil plus is intiated offering in one package Berlin public transport, long distance rail transport and both car-
sharing (Flinkster) and bike-sharing (call-a-bike) all operated by the DB. Berlin anyhow seems to be a laboratory
to test new mobility solutions. For instance, 10 car-sharing operators compete for customers in the city. Also in
other cities co-operations between some of the operators emerge. Most often seem to be the cooperation between
public transport and car-sharing operators like in Hamburg, Hannover, Frankfurt or Karlsruhe.
Assuming that the outcome of the market development of the Fifth Mode would be several regional MSPs within
Germany, but also within Europe it seems that national and European policy-makers will have to take care that
the full user-benefits of such a market can be captured. This would be the case when a user has a contract with
his/her regional MSP that enables him/her to conveniently and flexibly use all modes in his/her region, but via
roaming between MSPs also in other national or European regions.
4. Innovation System of Fifth Mode mobility concepts
To analyse if such a system transition as the previously described Fifth Mode could happen it is worth to look at
the innovation system that must support such a transition to develop a Fifth Mode. Fig. 3 presents an overview of
the innovation system. We have discussed the driving framework conditions like increasing fossil fuel prices and
mobility cost fostering car-sharing as well as the change of values of the young generation who have grown up
with the internet, smartphones and apps (digital natives) and also demand for having more options and higher
flexibility while owning a car becomes less important than owning the technology to be part of the social
networks.
Besides these driving forces it seems in particular to be the industrial system that is pushing the fifth mode, at
least in Europe and in particular in Germany. The research system reveals a few authors that address such
changes for a while already (e.g. Canzler/Knie 2009 and earlier works) and recently several authors dealing with
the future of mobility and mobility innovations (Huber et al. 2011, Schade et al. 2011, Schade et al. 2012,
Rammler/Sauter-Servaes 2013).
The political system could have such transition on the agenda, at least some paragraphs in the White Paper on
transport from 2011 can be read as to foster such multi-modal solutions that involve new mobility concepts and
require novel ICT solutions as part of Smart City Initiatives (European Commission 2011). Another policy driver
for Fifth Mode solutions, in particular visible in German national policy, comes from research and R&D funding
of electricmobility. Significant shares of these funds go into field trials of multimodal urban solutions involving
small electric vehicles (e.g. bike-sharing with pedelecs) or multimodal mobility cards (e.g. the already mentioned
BeMobility project). However, it seems that the political system is not aware, yet, that a successful Fifth Mode
will also require regulation on roaming between different MSPs to extend the scope of the Fifth Mode.
Nevertheless it seems to us that the industrial system is leading the transition towards the new mobility concept
of the Fifth Mode. Nearly all car manufacturers have set-up their own car-sharing system, are collaborating with
existing ones or have purchased established car-sharing operators (like Volkswagen bought GreenWheels). Also
some new entrants appear in the market using the promotion of electricmobility as entrance. A prominent
example is the Paris electric car-sharing operated by Bolloré. In Germany also the big public transport
companies begin to take seriously the opportunities of collaboration of public transport and car-sharing. Actually
the literature reports about car-sharing being more successful in cities with good public transport, thus the two
being complimentary. In Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover, Karlsruhe etc. the public transport operators
have established collaborations with car-sharing operator(s) (Loose/Glotz-Richter 2012).
Wolfgang Schade et al. / Transport Research Arena 2014, Paris
Fig. 3. Innovation system of Fifth-Mode new mobility concepts (own representation)
The theory of technical innovation system (TIS) also supports the analysis of the performance of such a system
as well as a qualitative/quantitative judgement of the status of an innovation system. Though the Fifth Mode new
mobility concept does not constitute a pure technical innovation system, we think that it can be tested against the
criteria of a TIS as described by Bergek et al. (2008). As this would be an extended paper on its own, we
highlight in the following a few quantifiable indicators that measure the performance of a TIS. The first indicator
is related to market formation in Germany, which shows that the number of car-sharing operators in Germany
doubled between 2005 and 2011 and the number of users roughly doubled between 2008 and 2012 (left hand
side Fig. 4). The second indicator relates to guidance of search provided by expert opinion about the point of
time when mobility services would replace 25% of private car sales. On average about 50% of experts expect
that this will never happen. However, in Germany the majority of experts expect it to happen; one quarter of all
German experts think that this would happen between 2020 and 2024. Both constitute interesting signals in
favour of such multimodal mobility concepts emerging in the future.
Fig. 4. Development of service providers and users of car-sharing in Germany, left hand side (Fraunhofer ISI 2012, BCS
2013), expert expectation for point in time at which mobility services would replace 25% of private car sales in percent. Each
regions total experts account for 100%, right hand side (Maas 2012).
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
550
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Number of provider s
Number of users in 1.000
Number of classical pr oviders Number of flexible provider s Number of car-sharing users in Germany
0% 1%
25% 18% 13%
43%
0% 7%
17%
9% 15%
52%
0%
0%
24%
0% 10%
67%
0%
31%
19%
25% 6%
19%
0%
5%
16%
16% 32%
32%
until2014 2015to2019 2020to2024 2025to2030 Laterthan
2030
Never
Whenwillmobilityservice sreplace 25%of
privatecarsales?
ExpertsDNAdigital
Furtherexperts
ExpertsUSA
ExpertsEU
ExpertsGermany
Wolfgang Schade et al. / Transport Research Arena 2014, Paris 8
Fig. 5. Number of published articles in newspapers and industry media with topics “multimodal” and “Mobilität”, left hand
side; the same with “Carsharing” and “Mobilität”, right hand side (Maas 2012, using LexisNexis Germany, data from 2012)
Fig. 5 presents another relevant indicator for TIS that refers to legitimation of an innovation. As example for
legitimation we provide the development of the number of articles in newspapers and industry media on topics
related to the Fifth Mode. On the left hand side we show the numbers for the combined terms “multimodal” and
“Mobilität” revealing a strong growth 2010/2011 though still remaining at moderate levels. On the right hand
side the combination of “Carsharing” and “Mobilität” is presented, which exploded from 2008 until 2011. These
and further indicators of the TIS analysis exist that reveal the take-off of the innovation system of seamless
multimodal integrated transport. Thus, we conclude such a system is taking-off, at least in Germany.
An important debate concerns the question who would be the integrator of the Fifth Mode? Are there any signals
that innovation system analysis could detect? Actually there is no clear signal, but candidates who operate at
least part of such integrative ICT platforms. Amongst these would be the Deutsche Bahn with their route planer
and links to their mobility services, Siemens as operator of several traffic management systems in Germany that
could also form part of a backbone of such integrated systems, the Moovel platform of Daimler or the Google
Transit service. This list is surely not exhaustive as developments on that market occurs highly dynamic today.
5. Conclusions
This paper raises the question if the Fifth Mode style new mobility concept is a myth or emerging reality.
Applying the heuristic of technical innovation systems (TIS) assessing innovation and market indicators we
conclude that these provide very strong signals that the Fifth Mode is actually an emerging reality. In an analysis
of economic aspects of sustainable mobility Schade/Rothengatter (2011) concluded that it would also rank
among the top five priorities to achieve sustainable mobility, a view that was supported by an expert survey
amongst transport experts also carried out by that study.
The Fifth Mode would develop in steps. In the end a successful transition to such a new urban mobility concept
requires integration of the different mobility services, public transport, variants of car-sharing, bike-sharing and
ride-sharing such that a customer only signs a contract with one mobility provider to fulfil his/her complete
mobility needs. Technologies both on front-end applications (e.g. smart-phones, key card systems for vehicles)
and on back-end (e.g. reservation and payment systems) seem to be available. Innovation system analysis reveals
that the market is already forming, and with most car-manufacturers, several public transport operators and a few
large system operators setting-up local systems the emergence of an integrated system seems getting closer.
It seems to us that transport research has largely neglected the emergence of such integrated new mobility
concept, though there exist some studies on car-sharing and a few on bike-sharing, but virtually none on such a
fully integrated Fifth Mode MSP. Transport science is thus lacking behavioural studies e.g. on how a user would
perform modal choice in such a new mobility concept, as well as modelling studies providing us with their
potential impacts on transport demand, energy consumption and climate impacts. In fact, the industry domain
seems to be more aware of the development than the scientific community, and is actually pushing it.
0000
2
011
3
1
6
10
2101
2
0
5
2
2
1
6
7
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Industr ymedia
Newspapers
11 4611 815 23 9
45 69
115
199
0000121
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2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
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Wolfgang Schade et al. / Transport Research Arena 2014, Paris
Policy-makers should also play a role in developing the system as they are requested to provide basic
foundations of such mobility concepts: roaming, data protection and standardisation in a sense that integrators of
the Fifth Mode get access to required information like time tables. As in the case of mobile phone
communication roaming between different mobility providers in different cities/regions should be feasible. This
will still require developing a suitable policy framework.
We argue that according to current signals of innovation system analysis market formation in Germany seems to
be in a leading position. However, developments in France, the US or China indicate that such systems could
emerge there as well. Schade et al. (2012) highlight that this would have significant global impacts on the current
business model of the automotive industry. Globally the success of a Fifth Mode MSP could imply that more
than 20 million cars that were expected to be sold in 2030 would not be sold that year.
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