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This chapter considers the book as a whole to draw out the key findings and link these to broader themes. In it we suggest that as we are in the relatively early stages of smart mobility adoption, there exists a key window of opportunity to think about to what end, and how, the transition can be steered. If this window is not seized, there is a heightened risk that governments will always be responding to, rather than shaping, events.

Four key themes emerge from our reflection. First, while the current system is not equitable, there is a need to be cognizant of who the new winners and losers will be in the next transition. It is far from clear that commercial business models always align with notions of social provision. Second, while the early stages of the transition appear to be marked by technological optimism, reinforced by government industrial strategies, it seems clear that without politics with a capital P, the opportunity to engage the public and educate decision-makers will be missed. This leads to our third point: that a lack of pro-active state engagement in the early stages of these innovations will undermine the institutional capacity to engage later on in the transition. Without governmental steering, the transition risks representing what we are given rather than what we want or need it to be. Finally, we highlight the importance of context to how the transition will unfold, with some countries or cities already at arm’s length from transport provision while others are more hands-on.

The chapter concludes with our reflections on what actions governments could take now to prepare better for the transition and on what the volume of work says for future research needs. While greatly enthused and rewarded by the debates we have had in assembling this book, we see these as the starting point for future agendas and very much open to contestation. We, therefore, hope this book acts to advance the study of the governance of smart mobility and to elevate its status relative to the significant body of work underway on the technologies themselves.

As with previous transport innovations, the transition to ‘smart mobility’ will occur in different ways and at different speeds in different places. Innovations such as Uber and trials of autonomous vehicles are already being welcomed in some places but resisted in others or left to the market. While the technologies may have the potential to be deployed globally, how this happens is, in part, down to the institutional settings and approach to governance amongst all of the actors (public and private) involved. Deciding who should act, how, when and at what spatial scale is, we argue, critical in setting the conditions in which new mobility systems can flourish but in a way which promotes the goals of local, state and federal governments and meets the needs of citizens as well as the industries that promote them.

This chapter reports on an international scenarios exercise conducted in 2017 across nine countries. Key dimensions of uncertainty were the degree of governmental involvement in steering policy and the degree of social desirability for smart mobility innovation. Reflecting on the period up to 2035, the scenarios considered the implications for smart mobility transitions by asking which innovations are more likely to flourish and which falter. Strong state involvement is reported as a necessary condition for the most integrated and sustainable visions of smart mobility. Other pathways were suggested to favour some innovations over others but typically offer a smaller market and more atomized and less sustainable set of mobility options.

Despite the massive social benefits that the car has brought, it has become evident that the current mobility system is undermining the benefits it creates with substantial air quality problems, inactive lifestyles, deaths and injuries from accidents and major contributions to the global climate change challenge. The introduction of smart mobility innovations, in promising to challenge the existing regime of automobility may be a major policy opportunity, and also provide a source of new economic opportunity. However, it is far from clear that these opportunities will be recognized or, even where they are, realized due to the complexities of steering any transition in the mobility system.

This book sets out how we should understand the challenge of governing the smart mobility transition and, in this introductory chapter we set out the key arguments and contributions of each part of the book for addressing these challenges. The first section of the book focuses on how the role of the government is challenged by the growing network of actors and the new resource interdependencies that emerge from smart mobility. How these challenges come to be recognized and resolved is itself a critical part of the governance process as explored in the second section. The third section examines the changing context of governance and the capacity of the state to act to steer the transition. This allows us to identify, in our final concluding section, a set of critical topics for those researching and implementing the smart mobility revolution.

This chapter provides an overview of parking policy. The chapter takes as its start point that parking is first and foremost a land-use issue. It looks at the conflicts and synergies between parking policy for the purposes of traffic management and parking policy to support various key land-uses and policy objectives.

This chapter discusses the main practice-oriented viewpoints on what is meant by parking policy and what it aims to achieve. It then provides a state-of-art review of the evidence base on residential, retail and workplace parking as the three key parking destinations before drawing together these findings.

The reviews reveal that there has been an overemphasis on the importance of the impact of parking pricing to trip frequency, destination and walk times in the literature. Much greater emphasis should be given to establishing the extent to which parking restraint supports the economy, the environment and social equity. Only then will we be able to develop a consistent policy framing within which good parking management policy can play out and make a long-term difference to travel patterns and the quality of life in our cities.

If parking policy is to work well as part of an overall package of demand restraint, it needs to be applied in conjunction with land-use planning. In transport terms, this means connecting parking policy to non-car accessibility. If the overarching land-use and transport accessibility policies are right, then there is a greater possibility for other parking management policies to be effectively applied and integrated in broader transport strategies.

This chapter suggests that without a clear understanding of the broader objectives that parking policy supports it will not be possible to design effective parking management approaches.

Purpose – To provide a policy perspective on the relationship between transport and climate change.

Methodology/approach – Two key themes are identified and discussed: the meaning of a major change in a policy perspective, covering the Climate Change Act and the development of a Low Carbon Transition Plan. A theoretically informed framework applies and highlights the importance of understanding policy change from a historical perspective.

Originality/value – The largely incremental nature of the policy change is considered in terms of whether there are real prospects of a radical change in transport policy that will deliver a low carbon transport future, whilst also allowing transport to fulfil its many other roles.

Findings – The chapter demonstrates that the current approach to climate change policy has seen only minor adjustments to existing policy tools which are not consistent with the more radical shift in policy targets. This incremental approach may reflect the significant uncertainty over technological change or a reluctance to tackle the difficult issue of travel behaviour. Whilst oil prices remain high this may not be problematic but more proactive steering will be necessary in the coming years.

This chapter seeks to bring more clarity and urgency to the debate about the impacts of ‘smart’ mobility by highlighting the critical role of the state in managing the transition to a ‘smart’ transport future. This debate is currently dominated by producer-led imaginings of how technological innovation will solve apparent mobility problems, but has yet to address substantively more complex questions about how the impacts of these innovations will disrupt the mobility status quo, and how changing patterns of mobility in a ‘smart’ future will redefine the places in which we live. The chapter explores what impacts such innovations might have on the economic, environmental and social outcomes associated with the mobility system, and some key issues that systems of governance will have to address as ‘smart’ options become an increasingly important part of overall mobility provision.

In Australia, corporations are playing an increasing role in the shaping of urban regions through their ability to mobilize capital to support large infrastructure projects and to usurp institutional planning roles which have traditionally been the responsibility of public-sector agencies. The chapter outlines emerging evidence of changes in the roles of corporations in generating ideas and mobilizing political support for their favoured city-shaping projects, and shows that the private sector is embedded in the processes of government, such as planning, in increasingly complex ways. Through ‘market-led’ or ‘unsolicited’ proposal evaluation frameworks, corporations can now bring proposals to political leaders in ways which go outside traditional planning processes and bypass conventional engagement with civil society.

In this context, we present data from a recent survey of planners in state and national land-use and transport agencies. The survey, conducted through semi-structured interviews, gathered information about the expectations of these organizations in relation to the nature and timing of the deployment of new AV technologies; about the potential implications for achieving environmental and social planning objectives; and about the collective infrastructure investments that AV technologies may require. This work is being used to shape a new research agenda to explore the planning and regulatory frameworks that are needed to ensure that the AV technologies can be deployed in ways that maximize the public good.

This chapter provides a reflective critique of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), an emerging development seeking a role within the Smart Mobility paradigm. We assess a range of its future implications for urban policymakers in terms of governance and sustainability (i.e., social and environmental impacts). We begin by describing the origins of the MaaS concept, along with the features of precursor technologies and current early examples. We then reflect on the marketing of MaaS and use it to consider how we might anticipate some potentially less desirable aspects of the promoted business models. Finally, we discuss the implications for governance.