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Enabling data-sharing: emerging principles for transforming urban mobility

The landscape of urban mobility is changing. The change is driven by many issues: urbanization and socio-economic shifts; increasing concerns around resiliency; citizen engagement; digital disruption and shifting customer needs. Mobility infrastructure and business models are adapting to the new environment. In recent years, we’ve seen the rapid growth of ride-hailing and ride-sharing; the maturing of powertrain technologies; lightweight and smart materials for vehicles; shifts in mobility preferences; and the deployment of connected cars. Soon, there will be autonomous vehicles on the roads. The option to plan a truly integrated multi-modal trip (that is, single ticketing and payments across a range of transport vehicles and routes) is closer than ever for the global consumer. Consumers are increasingly aware of the societal and environmental impacts of their mobility choices and they are beginning to favor options that are more convenient and more sustainable. To optimally realize this change, mobility needs a shared digital framework that allows aggregation of new sources of data from connected infrastructure and vehicles, smartphones and more. This framework can, in theory, provide a detailed, high-fidelity and almost real-time picture of the urban environment.