Hi, all! I am a student and currently doing an innovation research project at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. The purpose of the research is to find innovative solutions for last mile issue. Your opinion may significantly contribute to the project. What is Last Mile? Imagine you take a train or bus to get to your job. The train/bus station is one-two miles far from your house. How would your cover the distance? 1. You could walk, but it's time-consuming and is difficult in bad weather or if you are retired. 2. You may get there by car. In that case it may take a lot of time, before you find a parking place close to the station. Besides that car pollutes the air and contributes to traffic congestion. Which prospective solutions for the problem do you see? Could you imagine some vehicles/systems/devices, which are able to solve the problem? I will be very thankful for all your ideas, thoughts and comments!
If you are retired, you still go somewhere using bus/train or some other public transportation means. The problem is how to transfer a person between public transportation hub and his/her house.
I would use a bicycle to get to work. I don't because of the bad behaviour of most lorry drivers and some car drivers. I would feel much safer if all lorries were fitted with a cyclist alert and an automatic speed restrictor to reduce the vehicle's speed according to how close it is to the cyclist (or pedestrian). No more lorries overtaking me at fifty miles an hour with only one or two inch clearance.
I was being facetious in my last post, of course. It's a real problem. Different here in the US, where the distances are so much greater and there's much less public transportation... it's more like a "last 10 mile" (or more) problem. Only a small percentage of the population uses public transportation at all on any regular basis. I live about 5 miles from the train station. There is plenty of car parking at the station, but it doesn't go anywhere I need to go (my job is also about 5 miles from my house, in the opposite direction). I'd like to ride my bicycle to work and keep saying I will, but there's a steep hill between my house and my job... I don't want to arrive at work all tired and sweaty. But a number of guys I work with do ride their bikes to work. Here in Connecticut, very few towns have any public transportation at all. And except in the largest cities (like New York), the same problem exists at the other end... it might be a couple of miles from the station to your job, and few people would be willing to leave an extra car there, too... with all the hassles, you may as well drive the entire distance. The problem with any portable transportation (bicycle, scooter, etc.) is traffic (depending on where you are) and weather (again depending on where you are).
Circulating minicabs which are included in the price of the major transport can be useful, especially when the housing complex includes its use with the complex maintenance agreement. Some shopping districts have free circulating jitneys which connect to parking and transit.
Yes, circulating minicabs work well with shopping centres. But what to do, when you have living districts with one-two storey houses?
The minicab/jitney idea is used where I live, a 30 year old development with single houses, 4plex "townhouses", apartment buildings. There is an hourly bus within a two minute walk of everyone. There are ten neighborhood associations in the group. Our maintenance fees have a fund which supports a single jitney which is mainly used by the seniors to get to the shopping mall and grocery, and can be called and scheduled like a taxi. It will go to the bus center and the airport. I never use these, as a Citroen owner who spends most of his time out of the area leaves his DS21 with me so it gets used and does not rot away. You can join our DS Hospice group if you like.
