Co Wheels shopping (Source: CoMoUK)
by Justin Spinney, Professor of Transport and Mobility Studies
There are well worn arguments against continued use of private cars on the scales we currently see in many towns and cities around the world. Beyond significant contributions to global emissions, negative impacts include a range of emissions harmful to human health; significant contributions to killed and serious injury statistics; a large spatial footprint with significant impacts on everyday liveability; lowering of economic productivity through increased congestion; and a significant resource and energy input in manufacturing.
The car has been around for a while however, and for better or worse has become integral to many people’s accomplishment of what they consider to be a good life; and the benchmark against which other forms of transport are judged. In particular, the contribution of the car to the accomplishment of particular standards of care through qualities of carrying, accompaniment, comfort and convenience mean that any attempts to shift away from it risks reducing citizen’s immediate sense of wellbeing.
Enterprise car club – electric car (Source CoMoUK)
Considering the evident ‘humanity’ of the car (both positive and negative), the car – and particularly the electric car – has a role to play in sustainable transport transitions, but in what form? One way in which the car can play a more central and sustainable role is through a shift to shared electric vehicles: electrification of the fleet reduces global and local emissions; whilst sharing reduces the spatial footprint of cars and the resources and energy required in manufacturing. Yet with limited availability of options, car sharing – commercial or peer to peer – makes up a fraction of journeys and in some places is in retreat: Zipcar recently announced it will cease operations in the UK. Electric car sharing in particular has proven unpopular with many users, a situation which needs to be better understood if operators are to improve their offer.
There is an urgent need to understand the circumstances which can encourage a more rapid and wider use of shared cars to realise the potential benefits for more sustainable lives. We are pleased to announce that UWE Bristol’s Centre for Transport and Society and School of Computing and Creative Technologies alongside Austrian Institute of Technology and Lund University, has secured EU Driving Urban Transitions funding to examine car sharing in the project A Systemic Approach to Shared Mobility, Accessibility and Proximity for the 15 Minute City – SASMAP-15mC. To deliver the project we will be partnering with ARUP; CoMoUK; Prime Mobility; and Trivector Traffic in three case study cites: Bristol (UK); Graz (Austria); and Helsingborg (Sweden).
The two and a half year project kicked off on December 1st 2025. Through three case study living labs (two streets in each city), SASMAP-15mC will build an evidence-base identifying potential and pathways for a step-change in the provision of car (and related forms of) sharing in the 15mC. The project takes a user-centric approach to accessibility at the household and street level, collecting granular data on travel behaviour that can be scaled and modelled to neighbourhood and city scales. Placing differences between user groups at its centre, SASMAP-15mC will produce systems analysis to inform policy recommendations on shared mobility governance; multi-scalar models and maps of current and projected peak modal demand, and potential reductions in private car demand/ increases in car sharing; co-designed models and visualisations of street layouts resulting from private car reductions; and implement trials and evaluation of measures to increase/ integrate car sharing.
The project team will be delivering regular updates through the project website (under construction) and social media; holding knowledge exchange events and delivering talks at the DUT Knowledge Hub. Please keep an eye on the CTS Linkedin pages for further updates.
Professor Justin Spinney is a human geographer and economic sociologist working in the field of mobilities and transport. He has particular specialisms in cycling, household travel decision making; shared mobility; the political economy of transport, the role of ICTs in shaping mobility; and social inclusion.
UWE profile: https://people.uwe.ac.uk/Person/JustinSpinney
Email: justin.spinney@uwe.ac.uk