The recent public lecture by Susan Grant-Muller on ‘Enabling new insights into transport scheme impacts through next generation micro-mobility data’ continued to stir highly relevant debate we have come to expect from the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Malta.

The professor described the results registered in various cities using data volunteered from crowd-sourced transport applications, ranging from bus card use to cycle hire schemes. These gave a rich ‘high-fidelity’ quality of information, allowing a deeper understanding of the complex wicked problem of urban and, in some cases, suburban transport. This fresh set of technological eyes revealed previously hidden nuances of equity issues, modal shift trade-offs, age-related application branding and a multitude of areas that went far beyond just counting cars or their velocities.

Although counting cars or cyclists is relatively easy, how they select routes, where they go and how they change routes because of different conditions is often very challenging. Collecting such sanitised and anonymous data becomes much easier using opt-in mobile applications while the almost impossible task of tracking that data for pedestrian movements and individual bus or train passengers to gauge the efficiency of their trips is a potential pot of gold for road planners and transport service providers where intermodality is key.

The timing could not have been better in the light of the recent study by Diego Pajarito and Michael Gould that used similar data sets in the ‘Mapping frictions inhibiting bicycle commuting’, published earlier this month.

Using geospatial technologies to analyse bicycle mobility behavioural patterns, this crowd-sourced research tracked ‘the frictions’ along preferred cycling routes comparing Münster in Germany (70), Castelló in Spain (71) and Valletta, where cyclists faced 143 barriers, effectively halving the trip efficiency of Maltese cyclo-commuters.

Importantly, expanding similar crowd-sourced data to, say, a crossing, where people needed to catch a bus or a busy intersection for motorists, with real-time high-fidelity data, as Grant-Muller put it, may be vital to rebalance Malta’s approach to mass transit provision.

All in all, a lively lecture that prompted questions, which extended into the small post-lecture reception. I hope the institute will continue with such relevant, high-quality public lectures.