Member Article

This man believes he has three answers to London’s transport woes

As the capital steels itself for another week of travel chaos ahead of yet another rail strike, the transportation growing pains of a knotty and tangled ancient city such as London are on all too common concern for Londoners of all different stripes.

Packed tubes, cancelled services, rising insurance costs and congestion charges are all common bugbears in a city where the very act of getting from point A to point B can throw up manifold challenges and obstacles.

However, Henrik Jensen, who is the 29-year-old Managing Director heading up Ubeeqo’s London operations, believes his European tech firm has not one, not two, but three solutions for beleaguered Londoners wearied by the latest paroxysm hitting the transport network.

Through its 3-in-1 app, the Europcar-backed company provides what Henrik refers to as ‘mobility services’ for city dwellers sick of travelling cheek by jowl with their fellow urbanites.

Its first two services draw on the more traditional transportation services of taxi hailing, which is delivered in tandem with industry partners such as Addison Lee, and car rental, both of which can be carried out through Ubeeqo’s app.

“Recently we’ve had loads of users who have booked car just for the day to transport themselves to work and back due to for instance tube strikes.”

The third service, and the one which Jensen says the company places the ‘majority’ of its emphasis on, is its car club which offers users the ability to instantly book one of its 50 cars currently parked around London.

From £4.50 per hour, Ubeeqo users get keyless access to its fleet of cars 24 hours, 7 days a week and can book them for anything from one hour to seven days.

Train and tube woes

Already, despite only launching 12 months ago, the app has attracted over 55,000 intrepid Londoners who use the Paris-headquartered company’s service, with many taking advantage of its convenience during the recent travel chaos across Tube and rail services.

Jensen explained: “[R]ecently we’ve had loads of users who have booked car just for the day to transport themselves to work and back due to for instance tube strikes.

“Obviously you see Southern Railway where we’re seeing a lot of interruptions right now. We’re probably solving some of the transport reliability issues which London is currently facing.”

While public transport disruption is one thing, the actual experience (and cost) of owning a car in London, with spiralling insurance costs, rising congestion charges and the slow creep of fuel prices at the forecourt making car ownership simply unviable for large swathes of Londoners.

“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to own a car in London.”

We’ve already seen other tech businesses, such as InsurTech startup Cuuva with its pay-as-you-go car insurance, attempt to tackle some of the inflexible costs associated with car ownership in 2017, and Ubeeqo is very much of a similar mold.

“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to own a car in London,” argues Henrik. “It’s costing more money, parking charges are going up, congestion charges are certainly not cheap, and insurance costs et cetera.

“Add in the the appreciation in fuel and I think it’s just a very flexible alternative to owning a car, you have the same flexibility but you don’t have the same fixed costs of owning a car.”

Transport on-demand

Of course, Ubeeqo is not necessarily doing anything particularly new here. The car club concept has been around for a good few decades, and there are already a number of operators, such as ZipCar, who are also offering digital approaches to car sharing.

“I think…depending on how fast this development will happen, you will also have urban mobility on a subscription.”

What perhaps sets Ubeeqo apart, and what Henrik foresees as its most promising opportunity for growth, is the manner in which it combines its three services into one app and the potential avenues this opens up to introduce subscription-based models in the coming years.

Imagine a world where your monthly travel budget is pooled into one account and, instead of being locked into your TfL travel pass, you’re free to spread your cash across different services and transportation services for as many journeys as you wish.

This is the route Henrik anticipates modern urban travel to go down in the next decade or so, as the increasing acceptance of subscription models starts to permeate transportation and mobility just as it has with telecommunications and media consumption.

He said: “I think as a long term perspective, especially across urban areas in the world, I think you will see many parallels that we seen in telecommunications and where we are now. 20 years ago telecommunications was an industry where you’d call by the minute and that was it.

“I think, especially in maybe five or six largest cities in the world and maybe five to ten years down the line depending on how fast this development will happen, you will also have urban mobility on a subscription.”

Jensen is at pains to point out that these developments are still a long way off and there are a whole raft of regulatory hurdles that will have to be overcome before this vision becomes a reality.

Despite this, the appetite for a subscription approach to transport is slowly rising, and Henrik claims that user feedback from Ubeeqo’s users gives credence to this assertion, meaning it is a question of if not when we will begin to see a Netflix-style approach to travelling around modern cities.

“People would love to have their needs covered by subscription. This transition will come to this industry as well at some point,” he concluded.