SOUTHERN DIARIES

Saudi Arabia: How is Mobility Being Transformed in the Oil Kingdom?

Aniss Mouad Mezoued, Mobile Lives Forum

04/04/2025

The launch of the Riyadh metro in late November 2024 has once again highlighted Saudi Arabia’s ambition to position its capital among the world’s leading cities. This movement, driven by the diversification of its economy and the reform of its social contract, is deeply linked to the anticipated end of the oil era and the challenges posed by a desert climate that continues to grow hotter. To explore the role of mobility in these sweeping transformations, the Mobile Lives Forum organized a study trip to Saudi Arabia, engaging with local researchers, urban developers, and French stakeholders on the ground. How is mobility currently structured across Saudi territory? How do Saudis perceive and…

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

RESEARCH NOTES

The combined use of bicycles and trains in the Netherlands: a promising mode of transport in a suitable environment

Javier Caletrío

22/03/2024

The combined use of bicycles and trains as part of the same trip is becoming normalised in densely populated urban areas in the Netherlands. This article summarises the main insights of academic literature on the topic with special attention paid to the limits and potential for growth of this bicycle-train system and policy interventions. A key question researchers are asking is: could it be replicated in other regions?

SOUTHERN DIARIES

The paradoxes of Algeria's car system

Aniss Mouad Mezoued

20/02/2024

In recent years, Algeria has seen ongoing debates surrounding vehicle imports, their manufacture, motorisation, the infrastructures supporting them, and the persistent issue of congestion, notably in the capital. There is a constant tension between the aspiration to cater to market demands and the imperative to cultivate local industries so as to reduce a national dependency on imports. This dynamic unfolds within a context where it is a struggle to develop alternatives to automobiles.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

RESEARCH NOTES

A sustained fall in post-COVID car use? The case of the Lyon metropolitan area

Stéphanie Vincent, Olivier Klein, Ali El Zein, Pascal Pochet, Adrien Beziat

25/10/2023

After the collapse of automobile traffic during the lockdowns, Covid-19 seemed to have brought the car back into the city, to the detriment of public transport. Through a series of surveys and vehicle countings carried out in the Lyon metropolitan area by Covimob project researchers, changes in automobile practices are revealed to be more complex, while a rethink of car use due to telecommuting is revealed.

Thematics : Lifestyles

RESEARCH NOTES

Tactical cycling urbanism and the health crisis

Laurent Chapelon , Sandrine Depeau, Benoit Feildel, Adrien Lammoglia, Maëlle Lucas, Nathalie ORTAR, Adrien Poisson

25/09/2023

In the spring of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic prompted public authorities to rethink the use of public space, particularly roads, in order to develop means of transport that are both efficient and adapted to the health situation. Fearing that people would desert public transport and shift massively to cars, decision-makers in Europe, North America and South America turned to active modes, such as cycling, which quickly became seen as an adapted means of transport for ensuring minimum social distancing recommendations. Public authorities thereby implemented, with great urgency and varying degrees of success, temporary cycling infrastructures, known as "coronalanes" in France, in order to…

Thematics : Policies

RESEARCH NOTES

Post-covid Mobilities: A Greener World for Tomorrow?

Mobile Lives Forum, Métropolitiques

25/09/2023

Despite ambitious goals to decarbonise mobility, public policies have had little impact on travel-related greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, the response to the Covid-19 epidemic beginning at the start of 2020 radically altered key aspects of how mobility is organised. The Mobile Lives Forum and the Métropolitiques journal are launching a joint investigation into the environmental dimension of mobility in light of these developments. Using a range of formats (articles, videos, photographic portfolios, podcasts), in the coming months we will be showcasing viewpoints from researchers, professionals, civil society associations and policymakers. Our aim is to discuss the ecological transition in…

RESEARCH NOTES

What does it mean to be less mobile? Insights from the COVID-19 lockdown

Anna Nikolaeva, Ying-Tzu Lin, Samuel Nello-Deakin, Ori Rubin, Kim Carlotta von Schönfeld

25/05/2023

What does daily mobility mean to us? What would we miss if we had to reduce or significantly change our everyday movements? What would we gain? Most importantly, what opportunities and challenges would this create for designing and implementing low-carbon transition policies? The COVID-19 lockdowns offered a unique opportunity to address these questions. Our research shows that daily mobility plays a complex and ambivalent role in people's lives. While some aspects of mobility are seen as a burden, other meanings of mobility are so important that people seek “compensatory mobilities” to make up for missed experiences. This has implications for low-carbon mobility transitions.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Theories

RESEARCH NOTES

Cycling and walking: literature review

Renate Albrecher, Sonia Curnier, Vincent Kaufmann

20/03/2023

Recent surveys by the Mobile Lives Forum show that around 30% of the French population live locally, yet many trips under 5 km are made by car. There is therefore huge potential for a modal shift to active modes of transport. The purpose of this research note is to provide a thorough understanding of this paradox. It aims to explore, through a detailed overview of the current research in social sciences and urban planning, the ingredients that are likely to enable people to lead lifestyles in which walking and cycling are more regularly practised as a means of transport in daily life. This review allowed us to identify research questions that have already been well studied, as well as some…

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

RESEARCH NOTES

Women's mobility: literature review

Mobile Lives Forum

07/03/2023

For centuries, women and men have been assigned different characteristics and social roles: women have been associated with managing the household, the children and the private sphere, while the public sphere remained a male perogative. These different social roles have resulted in a power imbalance that favours men. The Mobile Lives Forum wanted to explore its consequences on men and women’s mobility, by reviewing the literature on women’s mobility. This work is based on French and international references.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

RESEARCH NOTES

100 “metro” networks to serve the whole of France

Pierre Helwig

31/01/2023

For us to truly be able to stop using private cars and seriously address the climate crisis, we need to end our current political inaction in an effective and systematic way. Pierre Helwig calls for mobility in France to be radically reinvented by using existing infrastructures to develop collective and active modes, and by proactively pursuing land planning policies aimed at reducing and rationalising travel. He thereby delivers an ambitious, credible and quantified roadmap to achieve France’s carbon goals.

Thematics : Policies

NEW VOICES

Utopias of slow cycling: Imagining a bicycle system

Ioan-Cosmin Popan

10/10/2022

In his quest for a society that would reverse the logic of speed that governs cities today, Ioan-Cosmin Popan starts by imagining slow cycling. In this thesis, original in both its form, which borrows from utopian literature, and in its criticism of the prevailing utilitarianism, Popan lays the foundations for creating a new society and addressing the urgent need to reduce emissions. This work received the 2021 New Voices Award from the Mobile Lives Forum.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies, Theories

RESEARCH NOTES

The rationales that underlie modal practices

Vincent Kaufmann

04/07/2022

Encouraging a modal shift from individual transportation to less polluting modes such as public transport, walking and cycling, is now a key recommendation of the UN to reach the goals set by the Paris Agreement. Achieving this ambitious goal requires a detailed understanding of the reasons behind modal practices. Why do some prefer the car to the train, or the bicycle to the bus? What factors lie behind these practices? This report summarizes the main results of a research project (carried out before the Covid 19 pandmic) on the motivations that govern modal practices in the cities of Bern, Geneva and Lausanne.