IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019 - 5

EDITORIAL

Jeremy Pitt

Transparent
Ownership of
Mobility-as-a-Service

have not got a sixtynine Chevy with a
three-ninety-six, and
I am fairly sure that
what I have got does
not have fuelie heads or a Hurst on
the floor. Nor is it waiting tonight in
the parking lot, and it is not going
racing in the street - but it is taking
up space in the street.1
I can also assert that, with the
exception of various "financial products" (like endowment mortgages,
pensions, and personal savings
plans (mis)sold in the carnage of
financial deregulation in the 1980s),
the top four most ludicrous purchases that I have ever made are the four
cars that I have bought. Generalizing massively, the whole personal
car ownership model is completely
absurd, for several reasons besides,
at least in the U.K., predicating the
entire transport policy of a small,
crowded island on road building,
traffic growth, and car sales, irrespective of environmental damage
and carbon emission targets.2
These reasons include: that the
"own car" is expensive to purchase,
and equally expensive to maintain
(tax, insurance, roadworthiness);
it loses half its value as soon as it is
driven off the garage forecourt; it is

I

Parking in London. The most popular British models have increased in width by 16% in
the last 40 years, and so increasingly encroach on pedestrian spaces.
powered by a fuel that is environmentally unsustainable and contributes to
rampant levels of air pollution [1]; it is
unused 95% of the time; it occupies
room in a public space (and, as the
deluded desire for ever larger cars
increases, so the encroachment into
pedestrian spaces increases, see Figure 1); it is not multi-purpose (i.e. a
different vehicle is required for different tasks)3; it can be stressful to use,
as increasing incidents of "road rage"
attest; and it can be dangerous, par-

1
Bruce Springsteen, Racing in the Street (1978).
Beyond the sixty-nine Chevy, which I understand refers to a model of car manufactured by
U.S. automotive industry company Chevrolet,
and the parking lot, I have absolutely no idea
what the rest of it means.
2
One of the Thatcher government's barmier
ideas: "roads for prosperity" and the "great
car economy." Like financial deregulation, that
worked out well. Having said that, the U.K. Conservative party had yet to discover that sane
and rational policy for nation building and economic growth otherwise known as "Brexit."

3
Anyone who has tried to get four 100 kg (220 lb)
men and all their golf clubs in a Nissan Micra,
as a prelude to actually playing the game rather
than an attempt to gain an unlikely entry in the
Guinness Book of Records, will recognize the
difficulty of this situation.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2019.2913064
Date of publication: 30 May 2019

JUNE 2019

∕

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

ticularly for other road users, as irresponsible drivers speed, drink-drive,
or use mobile phones (even those
who try to practice defensive driving
are not immune: you sit behind the
wheel of a car in motion; you can kill
someone with that machine).
Personal car ownership is also
incredibly inefficient [2]. Single occupancy of vehicles designed for four
or more is still wasteful, despite carpooling and ride-sharing initiatives.
Moreover, it is estimated that up to
one third of the traffic circulating
in central London is simply driving
in search of a parking spot; moreover, the energy savings of platooning (motorway driving with vehicles

5
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019
