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The COVID-19 crisis was extremely positive over everything that means alternative mobility and shed a lot of light on the fact that there is something else than owning a car and keeping it parked in front of the block of flats, said, on Monday, in a specialty videoconference, Andrei Clodius, product director at UrbanAir, as part of Neobility.
"The COVID-19 crisis (...) has brought a lot of awareness and has practically shed a lot of light also over the fact that there is something else than owning a car and keeping it parked in front of the block of flats or on the street in traffic 24/7. It's not necessary to own a car. There are a lot of other alternative options. (...) It seems to me that Romania, and Bucharest especially, are a pretty positive example of what urban mobility means. In Bucharest there are 13 operators of alternative mobility and it's comparable with any other capital, such as Madrid who also has around 20 (operators - e.n.). What's important to remember in the entire alternative mobility story is that we're not building technology for technology's sake, but we are building it for people, in essence. Moving forward, we need to take into account what means deeply rooted things, at the local level this extension of the home which is called the car for many. I believe without COVID-19 this behavioural aspect would have continued pretty strongly. I believe the positive side of COVID is that we can change our behaviours still," said Clodius.
"The city is multimodal. In order to move from point A to point B, you don't always need a car. Maybe today you need an electric scooter, tomorrow you may need a car you rent, maybe the day after you need a ridesharing solution. (...) I don't believe we should talk only of pouring asphalt and placing rocks to build bike paths. This is about legal infrastructure and it's clear a joint effort is necessary. With a correct legal infrastructure we can all collect the benefits. (...) Everything depends not only on our efforts, but also the framework we are given, at the national level," Andrei Clodius emphasized.
Neobility is a Romanian capital platform created to support and develop urban mobility. The startup recently launched UrbanAir, the app that integrates all the urban mobility solutions. The platform, present both on the market in Romania, as well as at the global level, has in its portfolio over 100 alternative mobility providers.
The "IT Generation 2020 - How do local mobility services providers cross the crisis and what plans for the future do they have?" is organized on Monday, by private publication Ziarul Financiar.
