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Purpose – The social dimensions of the relationship between transport and climate change are examined, in particular, the potential for unintended negative consequences to directly and/or indirectly arise from policies to reduce the climate change impact of the transport sector. It takes the example of current policies in the UK as its primary focus.

Methodology/approach – A combination of literature, policy review and the quantitative and qualitative evidence gathered through primary fieldwork research from a number of related studies.

Findings – It is identified that different social groups can experience very different outcomes in accessing transport and adapting to changes to the transport system, whether these are uniquely targeted towards certain individuals or more systemically applied across the whole population. For this reason, it is essential that policy makers fully understand the potential vulnerability and resilience of different social groups to policies that are intended to address transport-related climate change. The key component of social impacts should be systematically analyzed, by income, potential vulnerability and their spatial and temporal distribution, as well as according to resilience/adaptability to the proposed intervention. This continues to pose an important future challenge for research in this area of transport policy making.

Originality/value – This chapter highlights the potential for unintended negative social consequences to directly and/or indirectly arise from policies to reduce the climate change impact of the transport sector.

This chapter provides a reflective critique of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), an emerging development seeking a role within the Smart Mobility paradigm. We assess a range of its future implications for urban policymakers in terms of governance and sustainability (i.e., social and environmental impacts). We begin by describing the origins of the MaaS concept, along with the features of precursor technologies and current early examples. We then reflect on the marketing of MaaS and use it to consider how we might anticipate some potentially less desirable aspects of the promoted business models. Finally, we discuss the implications for governance.

Erel Avineri is associate professor in travel behaviour at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol. He has 20 years experience of consultancy, research and teaching in transport, logistics and operations management. Since he joined UWE in 2004 he has lead research in the fields of travel behaviour, travel information systems, road safety and behavioural change. Dr Avineri has gained wide recognition for his research on travel behaviour under uncertainty, the incorporation of socio-psychological aspects into behaviour models and the design of behaviour change policy measures. Applying choice architecture, Dr Avineri studies the effect of ‘nudges’ on the perception of and attitudes to CO2 reduction. He holds degrees in industrial engineering and management (BSc) and transportation sciences (MSc, PhD) from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Despite the massive social benefits that the car has brought, it has become evident that the current mobility system is undermining the benefits it creates with substantial air quality problems, inactive lifestyles, deaths and injuries from accidents and major contributions to the global climate change challenge. The introduction of smart mobility innovations, in promising to challenge the existing regime of automobility may be a major policy opportunity, and also provide a source of new economic opportunity. However, it is far from clear that these opportunities will be recognized or, even where they are, realized due to the complexities of steering any transition in the mobility system.

This book sets out how we should understand the challenge of governing the smart mobility transition and, in this introductory chapter we set out the key arguments and contributions of each part of the book for addressing these challenges. The first section of the book focuses on how the role of the government is challenged by the growing network of actors and the new resource interdependencies that emerge from smart mobility. How these challenges come to be recognized and resolved is itself a critical part of the governance process as explored in the second section. The third section examines the changing context of governance and the capacity of the state to act to steer the transition. This allows us to identify, in our final concluding section, a set of critical topics for those researching and implementing the smart mobility revolution.