Bicycles, mobility, and
the future of cities
In an
interview, Jay Walder of Motivate discusses how new services and technology are
changing how city residents are getting around.
Jay Walder is the president and CEO of Motivate, a bike-sharing
company with operations in 11 locations. Before starting Motivate, Walder was
CEO of Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway Corporation and also chairman and CEO
of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). He has also worked
with Transport for London. He spoke with Simon London, McKinsey’s director of
digital communications.
McKinsey: What are the big trends in urban mobility?
Jay Walder: You have to start by asking, “What’s happening in
cities?” They’re denser and more complex than ever before. Traditional travel
patterns are being blown away, and that’s pushing us away from some traditional
models. In New York, for example, we’ve seen a phenomenal shift downtown since
9/11, with the area becoming as residential as business. The far west side of
Manhattan is becoming a combination of residential and office space. We’re
seeing the development of technology hubs across the river in Brooklyn and
Queens. You see such changes in many, many other cities as well. It’s not the
same consolidation and centralization we saw before.
McKinsey: So what does that mean for planners, builders, and
infrastructure?
Jay Walder: It’s harder. The traditional model of public
transit is to get a lot of people into a vehicle that’s going to one place at
one time, on a set schedule, and according to a pattern. Today, though, we’re
used to things being on demand. So developing around the traditional urban
infrastructure are a whole variety of nontraditional means of mobility, such as
car sharing and bike sharing. In what I’ll call theMad Men days of
commuting, you commuted to work one way, and you went back the same way, and
the pattern was very symmetrical. Now travel is becoming asymmetrical. You take
a whole series of different modes across the day—a train, a bus, an Uber ride,
bike share, walking, a ferry.
McKinsey: Which emerging technologies are most likely to be
transformative?
Jay Walder: Bike sharing is actually one of the most
revolutionary changes that we’ve seen within the urban transportation space.
It’s redefined our idea of what public transit should be. Bike sharing creates
a system for personal mobility. It is personalized mass transit. You distance
yourself from the idea of stations and routes and schedules. Uber and Lyft in
many ways reflect that, too, and there is great potential for autonomous
vehicles. There are many challenges associated with this shift—technological,
social, regulatory. But you can see them as the enablers of tremendous change
in the city.
In the 20th century, the development of
cities was led by infrastructure—consider the way different rail lines opened
up areas of London. It was, in effect, a case of “If you build it, they will
come.” In the 21st century, cities are not going to be defined by that
infrastructure anymore. They’re going to be defined by technology and the ways
in which technology is brought into the city space. I’m not saying that
large-scale infrastructure projects will not have a place. They will. But I
think they will be surrounded by a whole set of other things that are going to
be increasingly important.
McKinsey: What is the potential of urban bike sharing?
Jay Walder: I don’t think we’ve even begun to see the full
potential. Fifteen years ago there were 4 modern bike-share systems in the
world; now there are almost 900. Think about what an impact this is having in
an incredibly short period of time. In Chicago, rides have increased by 70
percent from March 2015 to March 2016, in New York by 110 percent, in Columbus,
Ohio, by 66 percent. We’re doubling the size of Citi Bike, and growing Bay Area
Bike Share tenfold. And we are fielding calls and requests and ideas all the
time. Why is this happening? I think bike sharing fits not just with our desire
for mobility but also with our values. It fits with what we want to be as a
society. We want to be healthier. We want to be fit. And it just makes us feel
good.
McKinsey: How big is bike sharing?
Jay Walder: It’s tiny. In New York, the MTA carries 5.7
million people every weekday on the subway, and another 2.5 million people on
the bus. In April 2016, our bike-share system carried about 34,000. But I don’t
think that’s the way to look at it. One of the things that you learn as you
look at these types of challenges is that the impact is on the margin. I
remember walking home one night at about 6 PM and stopped at the streetlight.
As I waited, seven people went by on Citi Bikes. And I thought, “This is pretty
neat.”
McKinsey: How different could cities be in 30 or 50 years?
Jay Walder: They could be almost unrecognizable. So much of
the way in which we’ve defined the nature of the city has been about the way in
which we get around—from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles and to larger
vehicles. What we’re looking at today fundamentally reshapes that. In the
horizon of 50 years or so, I would be tremendously surprised if we haven’t
redefined our cities in fundamental ways.
There are physical constraints to cities,
so they are going to be in the business of reallocating and rethinking their
physical space. That’s going to open up opportunities for us to think about
what we really want. That’s going to be unusually exciting. We went through
that process 100 years ago and reallocated the physical space to the
automobile. That is already changing.
I am a big believer in the city. Despite all the technology
that exists, what is most exciting about the city is the interaction of people
within its space. If we had been having this conversation in the mid-1960s, for
example, we might have had a hard time making that argument. That’s the beauty
of what’s happened. Many people argued that these changes would be the demise
of cities. Actually, it has ended up strengthening them.
http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability-and-resource-productivity/our-insights/rolling-along-bicycles-mobility-and-the-future-of-cities?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1608
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