The Future of Getting Around: Multimodal
Freedom isn’t one vehicle — it’s a connected system
My Mom was green before it was cool to be green. We grew up in the UK, biking or walking everywhere, and taking the train whenever possible. With a 15 minute bike to the station, we could get to most of the UK easily. The car on the other hand, was framed as a chore - not a tool for freedom.
Once she had sent all her kids off into adulthood, my Mom did a PhD on bike-rail integration in the UK. Essentially she wanted to understand why only 2% of Brits railway journeys at the time (2010) began on bicycles, compared to 40% in the Netherlands. The answers that came back were varied: lack of bike parking at the station, unsafe road conditions from other vehicles, and even just not thinking of it as a viable option.
I didn’t realize it then, but a seed was planted for me: the lure of multimodal transport for more efficient travel, especially for “last mile delivery” after longer journeys.
The Opportunity
Combining modes of transport can massively increase the distance you’re able to travel in a given amount of time using public transit. We can visualize this easily with what’s called an “Isochrone”. This is a map that depicts the area accessible from a point within a certain time threshold. Here’s an example showing where I can get within 30 minutes of walking (purple) and on public transit (yellow) from my old office in Manhattan.
Unfortunately I am yet to find a tool online that can make a multimodal isochrone using different modes of transport, but I think I am going to build it. For now though, imagine if you had a bicycle and could take 10 minutes biking to a station that could get you access to a train going out to the suburbs of NJ for example. All of a sudden the distance you can travel in that 30 minute commute skyrockets up.
Now imagine you have a bicycle on the other end too… you get the idea. We can really open up the reachable area from our urban centers and make commuting a lot more efficient.
The Infrastructure Problem
There are some very good reasons why this isn’t a normal commute for everyone in urban parts of the USA, and these largely hinge on infrastructure.
We have a car dominant culture, and a great network of roads for getting around. As much of our country developed after the advent of cars, we really leaned into that, and built sprawling cities and suburbs, many without sidewalks at all, or with vanishingly small options for walking as a means of transport.
Take this example. I had a board meeting in Florida to attend so I grabbed the nearest hotel to the meeting in Jacksonville I could find. On arrival I wanted a quick lunch so I looked at Google Maps and picked a Zaxby’s nearby (relatively unknown in the North, but it’s a damn good chicken sandwich). I had the shock of a lifetime when I set the mode of transport to walking:
This was .7 miles as the crow flies, and 6 minutes in the car.
Similarly, beyond lack of walking options, much of our city's infrastructure is not built for bicycles. This is not a new part of the discussion, and headway is being made across the country with new bike lanes going in, and better more connected networks being made.
For now though, it’s not nearly as developed as it should be. Cyclists have to take small risks constantly as they blend between being pedestrian-like and car-like. Some traffic lights won’t change for bicyclists because the sensors are set up for cars only. So they have to either break the law to get across or use the pedestrian crossing. Neither is ideal.
You can’t take your bike on most commuter trains and buses, and bike storage options are lacking. Especially secure ones. When I lived in San Francisco I was lucky: my commute involved dropping my bike off at the Caltrain station where there was a valet system and big storage shed. If you left your bike locked on the street you were almost guaranteed to lose a seat or a wheel in the best case, the whole bike in the worst. I managed to scare off some would-be bike thieves while wielding a burrito near Market St once, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I had left my bike locked to a lamp post in broad daylight for less than 10 minutes and they got most of the way through the lock with an angle grinder. It’s no wonder people aren’t that excited to own a bike these days.
Technology Enablers
Now that I’ve explained the opportunity, and why I’m interested in this, as well as some of the blockers. I want to quickly nod at some of the technological components that make this an even larger opportunity now than previously: Electrification of everything.
Maybe before 10 minutes of biking got you 2 miles (~12mph). Do the same thing on an ebike and you might now go 3 miles (~18mph). Add this kind of additional distance at the beginning and end of your journey and you can quickly see how our “last mile” range gets interesting. Here are some of the technologies driving this part of our transport system:
Batteries
Lithium-ion battery energy density has doubled since 2010, so we get more power into lighter-weight battery packs. We get: higher range, higher speed and less tired.
I was the idiot in San Francisco with a single speed bike when I lived there a number of years ago. I arrived sweaty to everything given all the hills. The bicycle got me from A to B, and I enjoyed it, but if I could have arrived less flustered, everyone would have benefitted.
Power
The electric motors used in all of these applications are called “Brushless DC hub motors”. Back in 2010, a 250W motor cost ~$500-$700. These were the early days of e-mobility. Now that same motor would cost from ~$100-400. Motors also got lighter, quieter and more efficient.
Tracking
Putting GPS trackers on our electrified transport has become a theft deterrent. It’s not a perfect one, but it helps. In some cases, you could lock your bike at the system level, as if it were an iPhone being locked remotely once stolen. This kind of tracking and software built into bikes and scooters has also enabled the sharing economy. We’ll get into that shortly.
Solutions
I want a world where everyone who travels anywhere has a second mode of transport in their back pocket, literally and metaphorically. This increases the efficiency and viability of all of our modes of transport, public or otherwise. There are two main ways we will see this evolve over time, each with their own challenges.
Compact solutions
These are small electric mobility machines you can carry with you on your journey to extend your range and speed both at the beginning and end of the trip. One of the most accessible compact modes: e-scooters.
E-scooters are relatively small, many models weigh sub 40lbs and cost less than $400. They can fold up to be carried on the train, or thrown in the back of your car. The learning curve is not too steep - most people need very little practice at all to get up and running. With speeds of ~18mph these are competitive with bikes! We’re not quite at backpack level of compact thought, so there’s room for improvement still.
Another option that is novel and deserves a special mention is the Shift Robotics Moonwalkers Aero. These weigh sub 10lb for a pair, and can let you walk at the speed of a run (7mph). Whether they will see wider adoption I don’t know - I expect it will take some time given how novel they are, and how unwilling people are to look dorky just to get around faster.
An extreme example of combining a compact mode of transport with something longer range is Mike Patey, an aviator who outfitted his Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) plane with two ebikes for search and rescue missions in the Utah desert. A perfect example of how electrification and multimodal transport open up new opportunities.
Ignoring strapping E-bikes to your wings, the beauty of these compact, carryable options is that they work anywhere, with any mode of connecting transport. If you can bring it with you on a commercial flight for example, suddenly you can improve your end to end route time internationally, not just at home while commuting. They work in suburban areas as well as urban areas which is a bonus.
Sharing Solutions
By now using bike share or even e-scooter sharing systems has become familiar to most. We saw the rise and fall of the Scooter companies Bird and Lime. We’ve seen the bike share programs that use a dock take off around the USA, and dockless systems in other countries.
These have both regular bikes and E-bikes now, and have reached a level of ubiquity that even Google maps can calculate route timing for you specifically using one of these systems.
The big benefit to using these is that you don’t have to carry it around with you all day or worry about storing it somewhere. You can do one way trips and get home a different way.
The downsides can be painful though. I routinely take a bike to Williamsburg in Brooklyn and have to contend with there being no open docks to put the bike. So then you bike further away and walk back to your destination.
Using the E-bikes on Citibike in NYC, even with a membership, has gotten very expensive. I routinely spend more on a “Silver Stallion” (the E-bike) ride than I would on a subway ride, at which point you start to debate if it’s all worth it.
Another downside is that these systems are typically limited just to the most densely populated areas. The suburbs don’t tend to have them, so you can only use them on one end of your route.
My ideal future
The convenience of a good public transport network cannot be overstated. The more we build infrastructure and technology to make these networks more viable, the more demand they will have, and the more we can expand them. But building out infrastructure for more compact modes of transport will benefit all travelers, whether on public transit or not.
I envision a future with plentiful bike lanes and infrastructure which becomes a more official 3rd mode of transport in cities and suburbs, allowing essentially any mode of transport 10-25 mph on them.
As batteries and electric motors continue to improve, throwing a pair of moonwalkers or a small electric scooter in your backpack will become the norm. Maybe we’ll get tech so small that it’s basically motorized Heelys for everyone!
Every commuter who wants to minimize their commute time or live slightly further outside of the city for a different type of life will start using a 2nd mode of transport at either or both ends of their commute. If I’m flying anywhere, I’ll pack these to reduce my overall transport cost of getting around those distances that are beyond simply walking. We could convert a number of drivers over and free up space in parking lots at suburban stations as well as traffic on roads into cities.
I think these electric micromobility options are fundamentally FUN too. They haven’t become “cool” yet… let’s see how that progresses.
…those moon shoes look fun… fancy roller skates…