2. Work, Housing and Transport, without Private Cars
The following outlines a use case which could be applied to Brompton’s proposed 'car-free' factory in Ashford.
Linking housing and work is not new*. But, if they are both car-free, new shared transport services need to be developed. Not just for commuters, but to meet all the transport needs of employees' households. Work, housing and transport all need to be linked. To ensure the right shared transport is provided, people themselves have to be involved collectively in developing it. Transport Groups enable them to establish their compatibility to use shared transport and then co-own and govern it with providers and other stakeholders.
*Bournville, Saltaire, Toyota City, Silicon Valley tech campuses and Tata’s Jamshedpur
Building car-free work and housing 'prompts' people, who are potentially compatible, to form Transport Groups. This shifts financial responsibility, for new transport services, from providers to users. A household, which would otherwise own 1.45 cars (Ashford), can reduce its costs from day one, because there is no transition period during which new services and private cars both exist at the same time. In effect, private cars are traded-in for alternatives that meet the same needs.
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Drivers who use a carshare vehicle, for example, want to be confident: 'It will be there when I need it'. Providers want to be confident that the costs of a service will be covered. Members of a Transport Group establish compatible supply and demand using a decentralised form of crowdfunding, where the end point is commitment to a smart contract, which manages access and pay-per-use rates for the new services involved. The smart contract exists on a decentralised blockchain and receives real world data about use and provision of transport assets via an oracle network.
Smart contracts use dynamic pay-per-use rates to combine the capital and running costs of new services that are interdependent. A simple example is shown in the diagram below, where a car commuter converts to e-bike and becomes compatible to carshare, with someone who needs a car on workdays.
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The smart contract combines the cost of the bike with the pay-per-use rate for the carshare
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The capital cost of a cycle path, which has no pay-per-use rate, is included in the rent of car-free housing. Tokens exchanged for this part of the rent can be used to issue and sell voluntary carbon credits, validated by the car-free status of households. Polluters, such as 3.5 million people parking in nearby retail outlet, buy VCCs to offset their emissions, and they end up paying for cycle paths instead of local authorities, knowing that they will be used by the members of Transport Groups.
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Brompton Bicycle’s proposed car-free factory in Ashford is an opportunity to develop Transport Groups that link work, housing and transport. The map below shows planned housing developments within cycling distance of the Brompton factory, all of which require new cycling infrastructure, bikes and access to carshare.
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