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This chapter considers the book as a whole to draw out the key findings and link these to broader themes. In it we suggest that as we are in the relatively early stages of smart mobility adoption, there exists a key window of opportunity to think about to what end, and how, the transition can be steered. If this window is not seized, there is a heightened risk that governments will always be responding to, rather than shaping, events.

Four key themes emerge from our reflection. First, while the current system is not equitable, there is a need to be cognizant of who the new winners and losers will be in the next transition. It is far from clear that commercial business models always align with notions of social provision. Second, while the early stages of the transition appear to be marked by technological optimism, reinforced by government industrial strategies, it seems clear that without politics with a capital P, the opportunity to engage the public and educate decision-makers will be missed. This leads to our third point: that a lack of pro-active state engagement in the early stages of these innovations will undermine the institutional capacity to engage later on in the transition. Without governmental steering, the transition risks representing what we are given rather than what we want or need it to be. Finally, we highlight the importance of context to how the transition will unfold, with some countries or cities already at arm’s length from transport provision while others are more hands-on.

The chapter concludes with our reflections on what actions governments could take now to prepare better for the transition and on what the volume of work says for future research needs. While greatly enthused and rewarded by the debates we have had in assembling this book, we see these as the starting point for future agendas and very much open to contestation. We, therefore, hope this book acts to advance the study of the governance of smart mobility and to elevate its status relative to the significant body of work underway on the technologies themselves.

With the plethora of smart mobility innovations, their applications, and their pace of change, it is easy to get distracted by what these innovations can (potentially) do, rather than what we want or need them to do, if we are to meet our societal goals. The focus of this chapter is therefore on the extent to which smart mobility can help create policy change towards the goal of low carbon mobility. The concept of policy is broken down into its component parts, to outline the relationship between policy goals and policy instruments, and identifies the key tools underpinning policy instruments. In turn, the chapter situates policy instruments within an understanding of policy change and triggers for policy change, arguing there are two key ways in which transformative change can occur; exogenously and endogenously. The chapter argues that the onset of smart mobility does not suggest an exogenous shock to the current policy system, in which smart mobility disrupts the authority and beliefs inherent within the current policy approach to mobility. Smart mobility therefore in and of itself is unlikely to lead to a radical policy shift towards low carbon. However, in understanding smart mobility innovations as policy instruments, it is possible to envisage smart mobility incrementally changing policy towards low carbon mobility, if opportunities for reflexivity and learning are embedded within local policy contexts.

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.

As with previous transport innovations, the transition to ‘smart mobility’ will occur in different ways and at different speeds in different places. Innovations such as Uber and trials of autonomous vehicles are already being welcomed in some places but resisted in others or left to the market. While the technologies may have the potential to be deployed globally, how this happens is, in part, down to the institutional settings and approach to governance amongst all of the actors (public and private) involved. Deciding who should act, how, when and at what spatial scale is, we argue, critical in setting the conditions in which new mobility systems can flourish but in a way which promotes the goals of local, state and federal governments and meets the needs of citizens as well as the industries that promote them.

This chapter reports on an international scenarios exercise conducted in 2017 across nine countries. Key dimensions of uncertainty were the degree of governmental involvement in steering policy and the degree of social desirability for smart mobility innovation. Reflecting on the period up to 2035, the scenarios considered the implications for smart mobility transitions by asking which innovations are more likely to flourish and which falter. Strong state involvement is reported as a necessary condition for the most integrated and sustainable visions of smart mobility. Other pathways were suggested to favour some innovations over others but typically offer a smaller market and more atomized and less sustainable set of mobility options.

The point of departure of this book is that smart mobility will only be developed in a desired direction and fulfil societal objectives if it is steered in that direction. The market, left to itself, will most certainly not deliver on these objectives. This message has been conveyed extensively in recent literature, but this book aims to take this discussion one step further by focussing on what governance of smart mobility looks like today and in the future. In this introductory chapter, the authors provide a framework of different understandings of policy instruments, how they are selected, developed and used. After the array of policy instruments within the transport sector has been extensively discussed, the authors turn to discussing a broader understanding of policy instruments found within political science and political sociology. In doing so, this book contributes to the critical scholarship on policy instruments, while exploring the why, the how and the what of policy instruments in relation to smart mobility. The chapter closes with a brief introduction to the structure of the book as well as a description of the content of each chapter.

In this chapter, the authors will summarise the entire book and look ahead. The aim of this book has been to take the calls for governance of smart mobility one step further by analysing and discussing current and future policy instruments to govern smart mobility. The task has been carried out by discussing the why, how and what of policy instruments. So far, the policy instruments governing smart mobility to a large extent are focussed on understanding this new field of mobility, establishing relations and roles between companies and authorities, and making the field governable. What is lacking in this equation are policy instruments that establish the population as citizens with rights, voices and roles. In order to align the smart mobility transition and the transition towards a sustainable society, the authors consider the development of deliberative citizen participation an important initiative and the authors suggest it as an important field for future research.

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.