To Share or Not? A Critical View on Personal Mobility

Abstract

In their book Reinventing the Automobile, William Mitchell, Chris Borroni-Bird, and Larry Burns unravel a fascinating vision for technologically driven, shared, on-demand, mobility systems. Today, shared mobility-on-demand systems are one of the most rapidly growing sectors of urban transport, yet, the average shared vehicle is often as inefficient as a privately owned one. In this essay, I argue that the question of sharing versus owning is one that depends less on planning, technology, and operations, as the authors of the book suggest, and more on contextual factors such as urban form, land use distribution, and user behaviour. I organize my argument in three parts. First, I provide a definition of cost of shared mobility that serves as a basis for comparing shared with privately owned mobility. Next, I critique three common arguments in support of mobility-on-demand systems. Finally, I frame the question of sharing versus owning in a generalized yet addressable manner and I suggest new methodological directions to address it.