Mobility Systems for People and Goods

Every day, our societies use modes of transport for people and goods to accomplish activities. It's all about fulfilling a vital function: the physical encounter. Whether it's between several people, or between people and goods, encounters will always be necessary to enable everyone to develop.

However, constraints are increasing in many areas: economic, social, energy, environmental and industrial. Our current modes of transport, and the uses we make of them, are no longer compatible with these constraints. The choices we have made over the course of our history need to be reconsidered, and we need to be able to operate these encounters differently.

To find alternatives, only a global approach integrating all parameters and players is conceivable. Indeed, the performance of our modes of transport has been such that they have structured our territories, our organizations, our schedules, and therefore our culture and habits. And these, in turn, have accelerated our dependence on these mobility choices. To break out of this impasse, we absolutely must have a global view of the systems in order to understand and analyze the feedback loops, links and feedback loops, and the individual interests of the various players involved, so that we can then outline the collective interests and propose new approaches.

A wide range of fields and skills are required to understand the mechanisms at play, including transport technologies, information technologies, social sciences, cognitive sciences, marketing, economic models, territorial policies, the economy of functionality and cooperation, and collective intelligence.

In addition to the "one-size-fits-all" solution of the individual combustion-powered vehicle for people and the truck for goods, a multitude of mobility and transport services are being developed in France, Europe and the rest of the world. Some of these are beginning to come together to form increasingly effective service suites. Gradually, driven by powerful new industrial players with new financial capabilities, mobility and transport services will compete with exclusive vehicle ownership. This transformation will have consequences not only for users, but also for organizing authorities and economic players, for whom it could represent a tremendous opportunity, but also new risks.

This "integrated" approach is also supported by the European Commission through the ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) directive, and by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States through its Senseable City Lab, which is experimenting with new mobilities driven by digital technology. It is currently taking shape in new alliances between traditional industrial players and new digital...