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About The Index

The 2024 edition of the Urban Mobility Readiness Index provides in-depth analysis of 70 cities globally. These cities are geographically diverse,representing six regions — North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. They range from sprawling megacities like Tokyo and Delhi to more compact cities such as Oslo and Washington, DC, to fast-developing metropolises like Nairobi. They were selected because of their distinct mobility challenges and the varied solutions they are pursuing. The cities understand the importance of mobility and serve as economic epicenters for their regions, making their efforts to improve mobility vital to the growth of much larger areas. The cities also were chosen because data is available to assess, compare, and track the evolution of their mobility capabilities. The latest edition includes five new cities — Austin, Brasilia, Detroit, Lisbon, and Vienna — as part of our continuing effort to broaden the scope of the research.

In developing the index, we began with a vision of what cities need to be striving for — the characteristics that businesses, consumers, and policymakers consider indispensable today and will pursue a decade from now. That approach has also inspired three sub- indices: the Sustainable Mobility sub-index, the Public Transit sub-index, and the Technology Adoption sub-index.

The Technology Adoption sub-index was added in 2024 to determine how well a city is prepared for the adoption of new urban mobility technologies and innovation, considering metrics like labs working on artificial intelligence and machine learning with a mobility focus, autonomous transit in operation, and readiness for urban air mobility. The Sustainable Mobility sub-index compares a subset of metrics such as the strength of the multimodal network, public transit usage, electric vehicle ownership and charging infrastructure, share of pedestrians, and cycling infrastructure. The Public Transit sub-index considers metrics such as transit commute speed, public transit station density, strength of the multimodal network, and the public transit utilization rate.

This edition includes individualized recommendations cities can take to improve their urban mobility performance. These recommendations are meant to be actionable, taking into consideration a host of factors such as local mobility attributes, behaviors, or investment efforts. Some cities, like Sydney and Madrid, can invest more in cycling infrastructure, while others, like Shanghai and Sao Paulo, can do more to improve the affordability of their public transport. Many cities, including London, Toronto, and Doha, can do more to incentivize the adoption of electric vehicles.

Following internal discussions and conversations with leading professionals and experts, the research team arrived at six key attributes of future mobility ecosystems that guide the Urban Mobility Readiness Index:

Integrated: Mobility should be intermodal, one-stop services that provide seamless travel, commutes, and delivery experiences.

Innovative: Cities should encourage innovation and take advantage of the latest technologies, reinterpreting them to fit their needs.

Accessible: Mobility should be easy to use, affordable, convenient, efficient, and available to everyone.

Sustainable: Systems and solutions should not degrade the environment or health of city residents, and can even make mobility more efficient.

Collaborative: Municipalities need to create coalitions with private-sector enterprises — both large legacy players and startups — so they can work together to shape the future.

Resilient: As disasters and other risks challenge urban mobility systems, it is important that cities implement adaptation, mitigation, and resilience strategies.

Leading cities in the mobility revolution are likely to expand their public transportation modes, availability, and linkages; provide safe roads, reliable services, and employment opportunities; foster and adopt emerging technologies, like electric and autonomous vehicles; emphasize digitization and sustainability; bolster their risk preparedness; and align municipal policies, regulations, and budgets accordingly.

2024 Index Methodology

The Urban Mobility Readiness Index uses five basic dimensions to rank cities — social impact, infrastructure, market attractiveness, systems efficiency, and innovation. In the 2024 edition of the index, 15 new metrics were added, to bring the total number of key performance indicators (KPIs) to 71. These new KPIs were added to reflect the latest urban mobility trends, focusing on innovation and infrastructure among other areas. The broader scope allows the index to better capture how cities are adapting their urban mobility blueprint to address new challenges. Below, find the 71 metrics that identify which cities will excel in mobility.



The addition of five new cities affected the change in ranking in 2024 versus 2023 for some of the cities in the index. For multiyear comparisons, we used a relative ranking methodology to account for the growth of our survey universe from 30 cities in 2020 to 70 in 2024. This method effectively ranks cities on a scale of 1 to 100 so we can provide an accurate measure of a city’s relative performance even as the size of our survey pool has more than doubled.

Along with the latest edition of the index, our results are also displayed as three sub-indices.

Sustainable Mobility sub-index

The Sustainable Mobility sub-index is based on the following 17 KPIs drawn from the Urban Mobility Readiness Index:

  • Air quality
  • Car-free zones
  • Car ownership moderation
  • Climate-related losses
  • Cycling adoption
  • Cycling infrastructure
  • Direct electric vehicle incentivization
  • Disaster-risk informed development
  • Electricity footprint
  • Electric vehicle charging station density
  • Electric vehicle market share in sales
  • Government investment in charging stations
  • Noise and light pollution restraint
  • Public transit utilization
  • Rail network
  • Strength of multimodal network
  • Walkability

Public Transit sub-index

The Public Transit sub-index is based on the following 14 KPIs drawn from the Urban Mobility Readiness Index:

  • Autonomous transit in operation
  • Diversity of public transit modes
  • Length of walk to public transit
  • Multimodal app maturity
  • Public transit affordability
  • Public transit operating hours
  • Public transit station density
  • Public transit utilization
  • Rail network
  • Share of time in public transit
  • Strength of multimodal network
  • Transit commute speed
  • Transit estimated time of arrival
  • Use of urban rail

Technology Adoption sub-index

The Technology Adoption sub-index is based on the following 22 KPIs drawn from the Urban Mobility Readiness Index:

  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning labs with mobility focus
  • Autonomous transit in operation
  • Connected and autonomous vehicle adoption grade
  • Digital transformation readiness score
  • Direct electric vehicle incentivization
  • Electric vehicle charging station density
  • Electric vehicle market share in sales
  • Electric vertical take-off and landing adoption grade
  • Government investment in connected and autonomous vehicle technologies
  • Government investment in charging stations
  • Government investment in mobility sharing economy
  • Information and communication technology patents
  • Information and communication technology preparedness
  • Innovation grade
  • Mobility-sharing economy penetration
  • Multimodal app maturity
  • Presence of electric vertical take-off and landing industry
  • Road user charging/congestion pricing programs
  • Top university/lab presence
  • Urban air mobility readiness
  • University quality
  • Zero-emission bus use

Index Structure and Reliability

The KPIs in the index are assigned a weight based on their relative importance to the ultimate task of building urban mobility ecosystems that can thrive in the future. The Urban Mobility Readiness Index gives extra weight to factors that capture the ability of a city to be a leader in urban mobility not just today but also in many years’ time. As such, rankings reflect performance and performance prospects rather than just the competitive status quo. This edition of the index considers the growing importance technology plays in the urban mobility of the future. Leading cities are at the forefront of innovation as reflected in their urban planning strategy. The index methodology is cognizant of these changes and places a greater emphasis on innovation as a result.

Weights of the KPIs were determined based on discussions with a wide range of experts, including urban planners, traffic managers, transportation finance specialists, and mobility technology executives as well as data collected by the Oliver Wyman Forum and the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley. As part of the construction and testing of the index, convex optimization techniques were used to understand the proper weight structure needed to benchmark cities against each other. The extensive testing yielded results similar to the weights chosen by our team, reinforcing our confidence in the index composition and metrics’ weighting.

References

    Authors

    Guillaume Thibault, Andreas Nienhaus, Alexandre Bayen, Matthieu De Clercq, and Ludovic Cartigny.

    This report would not have been possible without the contributions of Julia Andrzejewska-Zajaczkowska, Justin Bothner, Helena Brecht, Tom Buerkle, Julia Chudzik, Jean-Pierre Cresci, Joris D’Inca, Jodie Gadd, Wai Leong Hoh, Dustin Irwin, Karolina Jaworska, Dan Kleinman, Eva Lim, Kuba Lipowski, Nick Liptak, Ian Maradiaga Rosales, David Markey, Angel Mayoral, Adam Mehring, Jilian Mincer, Augusto Mongrut, Cynthia Perez, Ramona Pillai, Brooke Price, Laura Reid, Ozzie Santana, Mattias Sundell, Weronika Talaj, Ai Peng Thoo, Wald Truter, Federico Ucci, Dali Velasco.


    Contact

    For more information, contact us at OWForum@oliverwyman.com.