Most of the world's population live and work in cities.
The current methods of transporting people within cities cause air pollution and
traffic congestion. Many city administrations, in order to limit these
detrimental effects, are promoting and adopting policies aimed at limiting car
use within a city or specific areas of it.
These policies are promoting the development of new,
alternative means of transporting people and goods. These alternative means will fill
the gap between the
two extremes of public mass transportation services and public individual
transportation by taxi or private car.
These new means, such as Car-sharing, already in use in dozens
of cities around the world, show that new transportation and mobility markets
are emerging within cities and metropolitan areas.
People in a not so distant future should be ready to
abandon the
old values which are behind car use today (Status symbol, individual ownership
and use, multipurpose car), reconsider them and place more importance on new
individual transportation opportunities, also made available by the latest
technological innovations of the last two decades, from electronic commerce on
the Internet to Global Positioning Systems (GPS).
In many environmentally concerned cities of the world, it is already more and more common
for people to want a car simply to move from one place to another rather than as a
status symbol. For potential car users, it is more important to have access to
a car when needed rather than owning it.
Technological innovations now make it possible
to manufacture small,
reliable, economical, zero emission vehicles to be used within cities and
metropolitan areas. Fleets of hundreds or even thousands of vehicles can be
monitored and managed by electronic systems. Many well funded companies, such as
car manufacturers and car rental services, are focusing on this new potentially
enormous business and on its many ramifications.
Mobility Center aims to participate in this business by
promoting, creating and managing in cities and metropolitan areas a network of Mobility
Centers.
