Hello #smartcommunity friends and welcome to #mobilitymarch! All of this month we are talking all things Mobility, which by now you probably know is one of my favourite topics. In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I have another great chat with Beate Kubitz, a Transport Consultant and Future Mobility Researcher in the UK. I spoke with Beate in Episode 194 about her Cargo Bike food delivery service in May 2020, and was keen to chat to her further. In this episode, Beate gives us an update on the cargo bike delivery service and what’s changed since we last spoke, and what their plans are for 2021. We also discussed the data they’re collecting on how many car journeys the cargo bike service is saving, which is just great to hear!

Beate then tells us how she ended up in the Smart Mobility and Transport space, and we discuss why it’s so helpful and important to have a range of different voices and different experiences in the Smart Community conversation. We talk about solving the wicked problem of reduced use of public transport and increased single-occupant car journeys due to social distancing, as well as the challenges of mobility and transport in regional and rural areas. We finish our chat discussing the problems with our current business models for public transport and the emerging trend of balancing the for-profit with community service transport options. As always, we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it!

Listen here: 

What we cover in this episode:

• An update on Beate’s cargo bike delivery service since we last spoke 
• About Beate and her passion for sustainable transport 
• Beate’s plans for 2021 with the fleet of Cargo Bikes
• The data they’re collecting on how many car journeys the cargo bike service is saving
• How Beate ended up in this Smart Mobility and Transport space 
• The benefits of having different voices and different experience in the Smart Community space
• How to solve the wicked problem of reduced use of public transport and increased single-occupant car journeys due to social distancing
• The importance of open-minded and interconnected thinking in Smart Cities
• The challenges of mobility and transport in regional and rural areas with lower density markets
• Why Beate prefers connectivity challenges of remote work versus the challenges of a long commute
• The problems with our current business models for public transport 
• The emerging trend of balancing the for-profit with community service transport options

Quotes:

“I’m one of those people that sees a lot of the connections between things. Rather than being an expert on trains or buses particularly, I’m more into the way that you connect together new mobility…that can fill in the gaps between the major public transport modes, and the digitization of that.”

“I’m passionate about transport becoming sustainable, decarbonizing it, making our air quality better, and making our quality of lives better through being able to move but in a more sustainable way.”

“If all of our customers collected [their groceries] in their four-by-fours, then just by doing their rounds on a cargo bike, we’re saving between half a ton and a ton of carbon dioxide a year.”

“It’s an interesting thing, because I wasn’t trained in [Smart Mobility]. And it’s a very new discipline, so it needs that kind of open thinking and being really prepared to explore things, and do the analysis, and work out trends. Rather than having that sort of narrow dive of people who know a lot about trains and buses, it’s being able to see how that knowledge connects with other bits of social trends and environmental needs, and digital developments. That is my contribution to Smart Cities.”

“This period has been really interesting for not prioritizing London in terms of [with remote working] you can be anywhere. You could be Paris if you wanted, or you could be in the Highlands of Scotland. Yes, connectivity can be an issue, but in a lot of ways it’s less of a problem than a very long journey.”

“This great levelling and the digitizing [that’s happened with COVID], I think that’s never going to completely go away, we’re not going to go back to traveling as much as we have done. And that’s going to have a really interesting impact on transport.”

Connect:

Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community 

Connect with Beate on LinkedIn or beatekubitz.com 

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community 

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube

The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.