Cities and mobility suppliers have to work together to avoid a fragmented future

Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) is urging mobility suppliers to collaborate and share data to make sure future mobility developments are not created in silos.

Kit Allwinter, TfGM Intelligent Mobility Officer - Future Mobility lead, will present a session at the Fleet Mobility Conference on November 5 at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge London, where he will explore how Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) and the future of mobility in cities offers great opportunities but also a number of challenges.

Allwinter said: “I will be talking about previous and ongoing trials in Greater Manchester, alongside our ambitions for the future.

“I will also outline lessons learned both there and around the world in making sure that the future of mobility doesn't fall prey to fragmentation, siloisation and monopolisation, but instead enables and provides a coherent and efficient solution to our growing mobility challenges.

“What are the roles of city authorities, app developers and mobility providers? How can we all work together to share data and insights and make cities better places?”

Greater Manchester is the fastest growing UK region with a population of 2.7m residents. It is being used as a testbed for door-to-door urban and intercity, multimodal and intermodal trips and offers the opportunity to identify and test new B2C and B2B mobility models.

The area sees 1.3 billion trips per year conducted by private vehicles and there are more than 300,000 inward trips per day by commuters who live in close-by cities like Liverpool, Leeds and Glasgow who prefer the convenience of a car, instead of an intermodal trip including rail.

Allwinter said cities across the UK are currently in a position to rewrite the book on mobility and they are at a point where they need to take a step back and realise that the way things are currently set-up isn’t going to work for the future.

Allwinter said: “TfGM wants to be the gatekeeper to an open mobility platform, but we know we’re not mobility experts so we want suppliers from outside the market to plug-in to the network with their solutions in an open-source way.”

Delegates can book their place now and for more information about the Fleet Mobility Conference, including the full agenda for the day head to www.fleetmobilityconference.com