Addressing the Challenges of Active Mobility or Mobilité Douce

Photo credit: Brett Sayles

Where are we going with mobilité douce? Where do we even want to go?

Look, I rejoice in seeing it increase. I see only possibilities for better quality of life in cities and an overall improved urban experience.

But the current period of transition has brought nothing but frustration for everyone.

What is “Mobilité Douce?”

First, let’s define the term. “Mobilité douce” likely has an equivalent term in the English language, but I can’t find one that I feel is satisfactory. (Fill me in if you know one.)

A Twitter contact suggested “active transportation,” and that works somewhat—though perhaps not for all forms of mobilité douce, some of which don’t require much of people, physically.

I’ll stick with the French term for now.

The term “mobilité douce” originally referred to all nonmotorized forms of transportation, from walking all the way to bikes and skateboards and even scooters.

More recently, the term has evolved to include motorized forms of these alternative types of transport—think electric bikes and scooters, for two examples—broadening to nearly encompass all forms of transportation that don’t include motorcycles and automobiles.

The Benefits of Mobilité Douce

The benefits to encouraging forms of transportation beyond cars, trucks, and motorcycles abound:

• Better public health thanks to decreased pollution and higher exercise levels

• Reduced output of carbon dioxide and other pollutants—an improvement in environmental sustainability

• Lower traffic and higher pathway capacity (due to smaller and more flexible forms of transportation)

• More livable, human- and community-focused cities, towns, and villages

Sounds great, right? It could be.

The Current Problems with Mobilité Douce

The massive and relatively sharp uptick in popularity of nontraditional forms of transport in urban areas—in other words, mobilité douce—has caught city planners by surprise.

Most cities have designed streets for automobiles and created sidewalks—where they’ve bothered to create sidewalks—for pedestrians. Most urban areas do not have defined spaces and rules for other forms of transportation. Where rules and regulation and defined pathways do exist for mobilité douce, which I’ve so far seen only for bicycles, I’ve never to rarely observed them enforced.

This means that pedestrians and cars share sidewalks and streets with a mix of other forms of transportation, including public transportation, all of which operates at different speeds and without much formalized rules and regulation.

In different cities in Europe that we’ve visited over the past couple of years, we’ve noted the significant increase in mobilité douce—and not always positively. I’ve had near misses with skateboards, bikes, and scooters as I try to walk peacefully along urban sidewalks, and I’ve struggled to determine how to safely navigate crosswalks and other pathways with vehicles of all types and speeds whirling around in all directions and often unpredictably, without defined paths, weaving in and out of buses, cars, trams, pedestrians, scooters, skateboards—and you name whatever else. (I’ve even seen people on manual and motorized unicycles.)

Taking a stroll has now turned into a game of old-school, real-world Frogger—and that’s without even necessarily trying to cross a street. (Have I dated myself by naming a classic ‘80s video game?)

I’m lucky that I’ve so far escaped unscathed, unlike the woman in Paris who was killed by two men on an electric scooter on a pedestrianized path along the Seine River.

The Future of Mobilité Douce

I fervently support the vision of mobilité douce.

Yet I realize that today, it’s only a vision. If we want it to become a reality, we can’t let the current problems continue and even proliferate as we wait for the bigger picture to sort itself out.

When it comes to mobilité douce, we need to address long-term and short-term objectives.

Long term, if mobilité douce entrenches, cities will need to reorganize roads and transit. In the 60s and 70s, cities reconfigured to ease access and throughfare for automobiles; to do so, they restructured and widened roadways, which required them to eliminate buildings, trees and green spaces, and sidewalks and pedestrian areas. To fully accommodate more pedestrians, public transportation, and mobilité douce—as well as automobiles—today’s cities would need to restructure again on this scale.

This magnitude of restructuring will take time.

For us to achieve this longer-term vision and maintain the momentum needed to propel city leadership and populations through the pain of the needed restructuring to fully establish mobilité douce, we need a short-term plan. People smarter than me in city planning and in local government logistics and best practices likely have better ideas than I can develop, from my layperson’s perspective.

However, from my amateur perspective, a sensible starting point could be evolving the rules for existing thoroughfares—roads and sidewalks—in densely trafficked areas.

Where can people ride or drive what? Where can they walk safely? What types of transport go where, and in what direction and in what general lanes?

New rules are especially important for buses, trucks, and automobiles of all kinds and for what I’ll call mobilité “semidouce:” The electric scooters, bikes, and skateboards that can top nearly motorcycle-level speeds (and, as referenced above, can kill).

Next, once officials and local leaders have defined answers for these questions for the near term, how can they prominently communicate this information to ensure its clear for everyone?

I’d recommend a blanket campaign comprising traditional news channels (radio, television, outdoor), digital and social media channels, prominent signs and road markings, and maybe even broad-scale ad campaigns with influencers and celebrities. (Like it, don’t like it, no matter: Influencers and celebrities get attention and generate buzz.)

Finally, these rules, once established and communicated, need clear and regular enforcement. Rules only count when people follow them—and, alas, most people only follow rules when not following them has consequences.

Can We Come Together on Mobilité Douce?

I want mobilité douce to succeed in the short term so that it can succeed in the long term, even if succeeding in the short term means compromise.

Sure, I’d prefer to wave a magic wand and have cities magically restructured to better support pedestrians, public transportation, alternative forms of transportation, and automobiles where necessary—but so far, no genius has yet invented that capability.

Until then, we must struggle with mobilité douce growing pains, as we do with growing pains of all kinds, in all facets of life.

Do I dream too big to assume that everyone will put up with the short-term pain in agreeing on the vision of the long-term gain of mobilité douce? Yeah, probably. At least for some. But for the critical mass, I hope not. I’d like to see this mobilité douce momentum come to real fruition.

Let’s make it happen.