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MyFairShare

Individual Mobility Budgets as a Foundation for Social and Ethical Carbon Reduction

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.

MyFairShare builds on studies exploring the applicability of sufficiency principles to change mobility habits, e.g. through individual mobility budgets. Experiences show 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. MyFairShare 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 potential will be tested in six Living Labs in different context situations, defined 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 in different countries on different governance levels, improving urban accessibility and transport equity.

LSE Cities is part of the MyFairShare 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. Besides leading the London Living Lab supported by Transport for London, LSE Cities’ work is  focussing on the rationale for focusing on and targeting transport (sub)sectors along with 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 this, 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.   

 

Project Team

Principal Investigators
Dr Philipp Rode, Associate Professorial Research Fellow, LSE
Co-Director, Executive MSc in Cities, LSE Cities
Dr Nuno F da Cruz, Assistant Professorial Research Fellow, LSE Cities

Senior Advisors
Prof Mike Savage, Department of Sociology, LSE
Prof Francisco H. G. Ferreira, International Inequalities Institute, LSE
Ben Plowden, LSE Cities, LSE
Dr Kate Laffen,
Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE

Researchers
Catarina HeecktLSE Cities
Charlie Hicks, LSE Cities
Alexandra Gomes, LSE Cities

Publications

Working Papers 

Rode, P. (2022) 'Enabling sufficiency: towards an actionable concept of fairness in mobility and accessibility'. MyFairShare - Individual Mobility Budgets as a Foundation for Social and Ethical Carbon Reduction Working Paper, (14 March 2022). LSE Cities Working Papers.

Principal Investigators
Dr Philipp Rode
Dr Nuno Ferrira da Cruz

Senior Advisors
Prof Mike Savage, Prof Francisco H. G. Ferreira, Ben Plowden, Dr Kate Laffen

Researchers
Catarina Heeckt, Charlie Hicks, Alexandra Gomes

Project Partners
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH (AIT); University o
f Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Austria; German Aerospace Center (DLR); Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies (LLU); University of Latvia (LU); Institute of Transport Economics (TOI), Norway 

London Living Lab Partner
Transport for London

Project Funder
Economic and Social Research Council: Home (ESRC) as part of Urban Europe, European Research Area Network Cofund Urban Accessibility and Connectivity (ENUAC)

Research Strand
Cities, Environment and Climate Change

Duration
2021 - 2024