'Jozi mayor making massive mistake to not forge ahead with bicycle lanes'

Cities are our future; they're also our spaces of crisis.

The crush of us concentrated in a handful of urban zones may be great for exploiting money-making opportunities, but they're dead ends as far as moving around these perennially congested spaces is concerned.

It's also costing lives with the World Bank attributing one in every 10 deaths worldwide to air pollution exposure.

Solutions to urban mobility have become the big ''what's next" and for Ross Douglas, a South African entrepreneur, his business is about answering this question.

Three years ago Douglas packed up his family and his Joburg life and moved to Paris to set up his company Autonomy.

Speaking from Paris, Douglas says the City of Lights is ripe for transitioning into an envisioned post-car future. It is a future in which single-ownership of cars is redundant and in which there's smarter infrastructure and networks of bicycles lanes and pedestrian walkways to introduce a range of efficient, environmentally-friendly alternatives to navigating the capital.

Paris still lags behind its European cousins, such as Copenhagen or Amsterdam, making it well-placed, as Douglas sees it, to leapfrog older technologies into a post-car future. And making the shift is a necessity, considering the French Senate estimated in 2016 that the annual cost of air pollution in France was €101.3-billion.

"We are at a crisis point. But this is also the centre of the perfect storm for change," he says.

Douglas refers to five verticals that are closing the gap between a sci-fi future and the present. He sums them up in his acronym Adesa:

1. Active mobility - like walking or cycling;
2. Data analytics - crunching stats and using new tech to understand and predict our traffic and movement better;
3. Electric mobility;
4. Shared mobility; and
5. Autonomous vehicles.

Autonomy is behind one of the biggest urban mobility conferences taking place in Paris from October 19 to 21.

It's now in its second edition and brings together companies, policymakers, civil society organisations and individuals interested in enhancing urban life through better mobility.

"It's like a massive auto-show, without the cars. We have people coming from all over the world. It's not about a single solution; it's about flexible, adaptive solutions.

"Big auto companies are realising the economic sense in investing in new technologies and new models of doing business because people don't want to own cars, but they will still need transport," he says.

Casting his gaze south to South Africa, Douglas says a city like Joburg should be bolstering its bicycle lane infrastructure.

"Herman Mashaba is making a massive mistake to not forge ahead with the bicycle lanes," says Douglas of the mayor's decision to tar roads first before advancing bicycle lane projects.

Douglas says supporting commuter cyclists and game-changers like app-driven ride-hailing services are critical steps to turn urban mobility trends into reality.

Douglas though, is forging ahead. With his Autonomy conference taking place this week it's an invitation for everyone to come along for the ride - on his electric bicycle, of course.

• This article was originally published in The Times.