Top 5 things to think about when planning for a more mobile future

As our world continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, the future of urban mobility becomes an ever-more pressing question. How we navigate our cities is on the brink of transformation, influenced by rapid technological advancements, shifting demographics, and the ever-present challenge of urban congestion.

GHD’s recent report [Re] Generation of Mobility explores the transformative potential of modern transportation planning for the future of urban mobility, considering the key elements to prioritize people, community health, and sustainable growth. This article delves into the top five critical considerations for planning a more mobile future: 

Every city has at least one fundamental, underlying reason for its existence, usually due to the transportation and trade benefits of its location, the presence of nearby resources, political motivations, or natural defences in older cities. For example, Boston is a natural harbour that facilitates trade, fishing, and shipbuilding. New York became prominent after the Hudson Canal opened an alternate shipping route to the Great Lakes, and Montreal is at the confluence of two major rivers, creating a natural trading hub. 

Similarly, a healthy, vibrant city is a place that people want to be. Traffic congestion results from people wanting to be in a city – a negative symptom of a healthy city that attracts people and has economic activity. Contracting cities don’t suffer from congestion.

We can't build our way out of congestion in a vibrant city with lots of economic activity. Increasing capacity draws additional people from other alternative routes and mobility options or results in people taking trips they otherwise might not have taken. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build roads and transit; we can enhance capacity and connectivity. However, increasing road capacity typically won’t alleviate congestion in the long term.

It’s no surprise among transportation practitioners that our demographics regarding aging populations, migration patterns, and how and where we work are changing. Different demographics have different needs and vulnerabilities that need to be considered in planning and designing our streets and transit systems. This applies to all scales, from thinking about network routes and times of service right down to street layouts and pedestrian walk times.

The predominant transportation technology of the time the city was built will define its urban form: you can tell from a map whether a city was built for foot and cart paths, trolleys, autos, or metros. These technologies shape our cities in ways that aren’t easy to predict. Today, as electric scooters proliferate on streets and sidewalks, individuals must learn to navigate among pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists.

New technologies change how we build our cities and how people behave, such as how they get to work, where they shop, and how many cars families own. Transportation planning models rely on historical data to estimate future travel patterns, but new technologies break these relationships in unpredictable ways.

A new wave of disruptors is on the horizon, sometimes called ACES (automated, connected, electrified, and shared mobility). Practitioners need to understand the profound potential of these technologies to dramatically change our travel behaviours and our cities to direct their impact in a way that will improve the mobility and connectivity of our cities.

Urban form, mobility needs and travel behaviours are heavily influenced by existing infrastructure. We’ve built North American cities assuming that households own a car (or multiple) that they can use for all of their travel needs. We’ve built most of our communities in a widespread form, further away from shops and workplaces. This, in turn, has made walking undesirable and transit impractical for many users. We’ve also built our streets to cater to visitors arriving by car (with wide avenues and nearby parking). All these widespread, car-oriented cities and suburbs have required us to build extensive freeways to connect them.

There’s no magic bullet for us to transform our sprawling suburbs into compact, walkable communities. We can’t simply demolish critical freeways like Highway 401 in Toronto and expect our cities to perform well – they’ve been built to use the existing infrastructure as much as it has been built to serve us. As a result, we need to focus on solutions that will continue to serve the entire trip from end-to-end, understanding the mobility needs of our current and future residents. 

While we can’t undo past decisions that formed our cities, it doesn’t mean we have to be prisoners of those decisions. Serious change and improvement require a deep understanding of the long-term, multi-generational impact of the infrastructure we build and a willingness to make bold decisions and investments, such as the Ontario Line currently under construction in Toronto. It takes political courage to set a vision and stay the course, even in the face of likely opposition due to the short-term impacts. As practitioners, we need to help our civic and political leaders understand and articulate those benefits so that they can build the political support to deliver these transformative projects.

In order to create a more mobile future, we need to acknowledge and learn from our histories, help our political leaders articulate a clear case for building these projects and staying the course despite the disruption and opposition, and implement mobility solutions that will benefit our cities and residents for generations.