MyFairShare

Reducing carbon emissions is one of the most important goals to prevent the world from disastrous future consequences of climate change. The transport sector requires specific actions, as it proves most difficult to decarbonise and transport emissions are again increasing. However, efforts to foster mobility behaviour change largely fail, as future national reduction goals are too unspecific for citizens to induce a sense of personal responsibility and engagement.

The MyFairShare project is guided by three Core Principles. The first is that the challenge of transport emissions needs to be seen from a sufficiency perspective to be effectively addressed. The second is that fairness must be a fundamental value of transport systems. The third is that systemic change requires addressing not only the modes we use to move but the reasons we move in the first place.

The project combines and expands relevant knowledge, data and models to construct a scheme for fair distribution of individual mobility budgets and identifies effective policy strategies. The concept is tested in six different Living Labs varying by scale (community – municipal – (trans-)national) and scope (citizen level– transport management level – strategic development level). The resulting policy toolkits and guidelines support the introduction of socially acceptable mobility budgets on different governance levels, improving urban accessibility and transport equity.

MyFairShare builds on studies exploring the applicability of sufficiency principles to change mobility habits, for example through individual mobility budgets. Experience shows that transport emissions might be effectively reduced by limiting allowances for carbon-intensive transport modes but would only be acceptable if the individual share of allowances is perceived as fair. The project is delivered by a research consortium led by the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT). This consortium includes nine partners from six countries: Austria, Germany, Latvia, Norway, Switzerland and the UK.

LSE Cities’ work for the project addresses the rationale for focusing on and targeting transport (sub)sectors along with exploring the respective data requirements and explicit boundaries of mobility budgets (e.g. types of mobility, travel needs, geographic scales). This engagement ultimately targets the development of an actionable concept of fairness in mobility and accessibility that is suitable for operationalising mobility budgets. As part of its research, LSE Cities will conduct an institutional analysis and will identify the degree to which different policy instruments can address mobility budgets alongside the socio-economic and politico-institutional determinants critical for their potential implementation.  

LSE Cities is leading the London Living Lab (supported by Transport for London and the University of St Gallen) that analyses the role of attitudes towards fairness and decision processes for behavioural change in the setting of Individual Mobility Budgets. 

This lab includes a detailed analysis of current mobility behaviour focussing on distributional aspects of carbon emissions and space consumption linked to transport. Separately, a representative survey on attitudes related to fairness in urban mobility is conducted. The lab also engages with car drivers in London through an experiment operating at two levels: First, a series of convenings replicating the format of a citizen jury to discuss and develop fair transport policy approaches for London. Second, a sequence of short mobility behaviour experiments during which participants respond to different input and instructions as part of the living lab experimentation.

To find out more about the project, its core principles, its basic concepts and the six living labs and to explore a collection of publication and tools prodeuce by the MyFairShare consortium please visit the project website at www.myfairshare.eu/.