Leeds residents to design alternatives to car ownership

Researchers have announced a multi-million pound project to encourage people in Leeds to design and trial an alternative to private vehicle ownership.

The ground-breaking INFUZE (Inspiring Futures for Zero Carbon Mobility) study will ask city communities to help design bespoke mobility solutions, which could include car clubs, taxi-style responsive bus services and shared bike and scooter schemes.

The £7.8 million scheme is being led by the Institute for Transport Studies (ITS) at the University of Leeds, with research partners The Royal College of Art and Lancaster University, and is funded by the Engineering and Sciences Research Council Physics.

The question is not “can you live without a car?” but “what would a world look like where people didn’t need to own their own cars?”

It will eventually involve up to 400 households in the city and could lead to the creation of a national center of excellence in low-carbon alternatives to car ownership.

There are more than 20 partners in the project, including Leeds City Council, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Calderdale Council, Beryl bike and scooter sharing scheme, Enterprise Car Club and First Bus. They and the University of Leeds contributed a further £1.5m to the research.

Greg Marsden, professor of transport governance at ITS and director of INFUZE, said that at the heart of the project was a pressing need to radically rethink the ways people get around.

“This will not only address the carbon crisis of a car-dependent system, but also the related persistent challenges of congestion, air pollution, safety and inclusion – something that just switching to electric vehicles does not,” he added.

“The question is not ‘can you live without a car?’ but ‘what would a world look like where people didn’t need to own their own cars?'”

Transport is the biggest contributor to UK carbon emissions, accounting for 23%. In the UK alone, £57 billion is spent annually on owning, insuring and maintaining cars alone. Research shows, however, that they are only on the move 4% of the day and travel 960 billion miles with their seats empty each year. Being locked into individual car ownership is also a major contributor to the cost of living crisis.

A third of cars do not move on any given day. INFUZE researchers believe that if private vehicles disappeared from our streets and people adopted shared vehicles, there would be more space for pedestrians, cyclists, people playing and adapting to the increase in home deliveries.

INFUZE will encourage people in Leeds to co-design and trial an alternative to private vehicle ownership

A different approach

The INFUZE project is based on the premise that new technologies and shared transportation could keep people mobile with far less energy and carbon than individually owned cars. This could include on-demand busing, tailoring of transport mode sizing to needs, and light motorized mobility options such as scooters or two-seater electric vehicles.

Professor Marsden added: “Owning our own cars has been with us for decades. Radical change in transportation is not something that can be designed by engineers or entrepreneurs and just given to people. INFUZE takes a different approach, listening to what people think and exploring what people can imagine to co-design a better future with technical experts.”

Five-year plan

The project will run over the next five years, growing in scale and scope as it progresses:

• Year 1 – researchers will talk to communities in Leeds that are already moving away from individual car ownership to find out what works and what is difficult.
• Year 2 – different models will be trialled in a small number of areas where residents are willing and where Leeds City Council is already planning improvements to the transport system.
• Year 3 – there will be an increasingly ambitious set of experiments in communities that residents want to participate in – this could even include subsidizing car club vehicles and buying people out of their car finance.
• Year 4 – the project will move to full surface trials, which could include innovative experiments in reallocating road space to respond to the changes that a shift to on-demand mobility could unlock.

Year 5 – research will focus on how the experiences of Leeds communities and the science developed in INFUZE could be adopted in the UK.

The INFUZE program grant will be an international first in its mission to address the transition to low-carbon travel options that can be delivered at scale.

Leeds was chosen as a result of the City Council’s strategic aim to be a car-free city.

Councilor Helen Hayden, Leeds City Council’s Executive Member for Sustainable Development and Infrastructure said: “I am very excited about the INFUZE project, which fits perfectly with our transport strategy of Leeds being a car-free city .

“We need to give people these multi-modal options – whether it’s traveling by bus or cycling or renting a car. Transport is Leeds’ biggest carbon emitter and the more we can get people to use less carbon-emitting forms of transport the better, but we want to do it in a way that fits our lives and it means that people have options and are not restricted.”

Mobility that works for everyone

Dan Phillips is an Innovation Fellow at the Royal College of Art and one of the co-investigators of the INFUZE project. He said: “The Royal College of Art is delighted to be part of the INFUZE project. We specialize in co-design, which means designing with people, not for them.

“It’s a great opportunity to help us envision and co-create the city’s future transportation. Mobility that works for everyone.”

Beryl CEO and co-founder Phil Ellis said: “Our shared transport schemes are designed to remove barriers to active travel for people and encourage them to adopt more sustainable transport habits.

“We know from speaking directly to our passengers that around a third of our journeys are directly replacing journeys with private vehicles, which not only has a positive impact on traffic congestion and carbon emissions, but also on people’s physical and mental health .

“We are delighted to be part of this project and its collaborative approach to decarbonising urban transport.”

Dan Gursel, Commercial Director of the Enterprise Car Club, said: “We are delighted to be part of the INFUZE project, which will help explore alternative solutions that can provide cost-effective and low-carbon mobility to the communities of Leeds.

“The focus on finding more sustainable ways to travel, along with people looking for ways to cut costs, is causing us to reevaluate our behavior and attitudes towards travel.

“This project presents an opportunity for transformation, innovation and collaboration in the transport sector and I am delighted that Enterprise Car Club vehicles are part of the solution.”

Additional Information

Photo of INFUZE partners by Victor de Jesus. Left to right: Sonja Woodcock (Leeds ACTS) Storm Baines (Enterprise Mobility) Professor Greg Marsden (Director of INFUZE) Professor Charisma Choudhury (Institute for Transport Studies) Councilor Helen Hayden (Leeds City Council Executive Member for Sustainable Development and Infrastructure ) Dan Bell (Beryl) Dr. Chiara Calastri (Institute for Transport Studies) Stephanie Burras (Ahead Partnership)

INFUZE project partners: Lancaster University, Royal College of Art, Leeds City Council, Department for Transport, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Calderdale Council, Transport for the North, Transport for the West Midlands, Ahead Partnership, Arup, Steer, Beryl, Enterprise Car Club, First Bus , Padam Mobility, Ridetandem, Mobilityways, Connected Places Catapult, Zemo Partnership, LeedsACTS! Sector III Leeds, Climate Action Leeds, Fore Consulting.

For media enquiries, please contact Kersti Mitchell from the University of Leeds Press Office at [email protected]