Hello #smartcommunity friends and welcome back 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 a brilliant chat with Sandra Phillips, Shared Mobility Architect and the founder/CEO of MovMi, a boutique agency that turns new mobility visions into reality. Sandra tells us about her background and her passion for shared mobility, and how working at Car2Go sparked her interest in the Smart Mobility Space. We talked about how transport and mobility fits into the Smart Community space, and what a Smart Community with a Smart Transportation Ecosystem means to Sandra. Sandra then tells us about Car2Go and MovMi, and why she founded it. We discuss mobility infrastructure in metro versus regional, and better planning and policy for new forms of mobility, plus partnerships and genuine collaboration between the public and private sector. We finish our chat discussing the emerging trends of holistic thinking of the overall transport system and the importance of telling diverse stories and sharing diverse perspectives in this space. As always we hope you enjoyed listening to this podcast as much as we enjoyed making it. 

Listen here: 

What we cover in this episode:

• Sandra’s background and passion for shared mobility 
• What sparked Sandra’s interest in the shared mobility space 
• How Smart Mobility fits into the Smart Community space 
• What a Smart Community and smart transportation ecosystem means to Sandra
• About Car2Go and MovMi, and why Sandra founded it
• How MovMi fits into the transport ecosystem
• The importance of ecosystem thinking
• Shared mobility options and flexible services in rural and regional areas vs metro
• Why we need Smart Infrastructure and better planning and policy for new forms of mobility 
• The power of partnerships and genuine collaboration between public and private 
• Some projects and collaborations in Metro Vancouver that Sandra has worked on
• The emerging trends of overall transport system holistic thinking and the merging of personal mobility with delivery vehicles
• Importance of telling diverse stories and sharing diverse perspectives

Quotes:

“We specialize to shared mobility, which is or has been my passion for the last 10 years. And when I say shared mobility, just so we’re all clear, it’s like the short term, on-demand access to any type of vehicle, whether that’s a bus or a motorcycle, or a bike or a kick scooter or car. It’s when and if you need it.”

“Transportation, for me, is always like the arteries that connect this entire system and gets us from place A to B to our friends to shopping, etc. I know we’re moving a little bit less these last months. But still, it’s ultimately what moves us around. So I think it’s a big part of [Smart Community]. And it’s quite frankly a big part that’s quite broken. Because it’s been so focused on cars, specifically, and so much of our infrastructure has been dedicated to that one mode over everything else.”

“As much as the pandemic has been quite a challenge for public transit, one thing it has done is there is a lot more of an understanding that we actually have to collaborate. And if we want people not to go back to their own vehicles, it would be a good idea to integrate this shared new mobility world into public transit and see it as an ecosystem.”

“Just because we have all this technology and these new forms of mobility, they don’t all work great in a specific context. You have to pick and choose what works well and what makes most sense.”

“If you want to increase the diversity, you also have to show the different stories and the different people that are in the space, working on these problems. You know, you go to a typical transportation conference, and there’s a certain group that keeps telling the story, and you need to bring in these other perspectives, because then it gets appealing to a larger audience.”

Links: 

Car2Go 

movmi.net 

Connect: 

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

Connect with Sandra on LinkedIn 

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.