City Break Tourism, the rental car shortage, and transit/sustainable mobility as a way to get around: Part 1

-- "City Break Tourism, the rental car shortage, and transit/sustainable mobility as a way to get around: Part 1"
-- "City Break Tourism: Part 2 | Transit Marketing"
-- "City Break Tourism: Part 3 | Urban Bicycle Tourism"

Popularized in Europe, the term "City Break Tourism" is another name for urban tourism, where low cost airlines (supplemented by an extensive rail network), allows easy and inexpensive visitation across the continent, especially for residents of the European Union, who don't need passports to travel between countries.

Thessaloniki is Greece's second largest city.  Photo: Getty.

This paper, "Development of Thessaloniki, Greece as a City Break tourism destination," is a particularly good discussion of the phenomenon.  Also see the Telegraph travel story, "How to spend 48 hours in Thessaloniki."

Getting around in European cities: cars aren't necessary.  Because most European cities have high quality local transit networks, including rail, subway, tram (either or both light rail and streetcars), bus and depending on the community, water transit plus extensive rental bike options and even car share, people doing urban tourism in those countries don't have to worry much about how to get around, they can do it mostly by foot and by transit, unless they are traveling outside of cities.

City break tourism in the US is dependent on rental cars and more recently, ride hailing.  By contrast, most people in the US aren't familiar with how to use transit, because the nation's mobility paradigm is decidedly organized around the car.  

If they don't drive to their destination, when people travel, typically they rent a car at their destination, although in the past few years use of ride hailing "services" like Uber and Lyft have also been relied upon, for a number of reasons -- people's unwillingness or unfamiliarity with transit; inadequate transit; the convenience of using a "universal" e-app rather than having to learn how to use regional taxi services in a particular community; sense of ride hailing as a luxury service, etc.

This year, it's been very difficult to rent cars, because rental car fleets shrunk precipitously because of the pandemic, the bankruptcy of Hertz, etc. ("Tales from the ‘car rental apocalypse’: How travelers are coping," Washington Post).

People are finding that without reservations, no cars are available, and in any case, the prices are outlandish, and can be hundreds of dollars per day (during the post-2008 recession we were able to rent cars for as low as $13/day).

Some people have even resorted to renting U-Haul trucks, finding it to be cheaper.

Ride hailing has been equally problematic, as a dearth of cars and drivers has led to significant cost rises ("Prepare to Pay More for Uber and Lyft Rides," New York Times), putting it out of financial reach for many users.

What about transit (and bikes)?  With few exceptions most of the media coverage on the rental car shortage doesn't suggest using transit and/or bicycles to get around on a city break tourist trip as opposed to relying on a car.   (This refers to transit services serving locals, as opposed to tourist bus services.)

This article, "9 options for when you can’t find a rental car," does mention transit,  but mostly the options discussed are vehicle based, from peer-to-peer car sharing like Getaround and Turo, to even buying a car and driving it home after your trip.

Although if you do a Google search, you can find older articles about transit-centric city tourism.  But while it's true that many cities aren't served by a good transit system, the major cities are, and it's possible to get around by subway and light rail (if it exists) and bus.  

Micromobility: Bikes and scooters.  Many cities have bike sharing systems, and it's pretty easy to get a multi-day pass to reduce the cost (many tourists don't know about that option, and rack up high fees).  If not, usually there are bike rental options available as well, on an hourly, day or multi-day basis.

Scooters are usually a separate offering from bike share, and require membership, but the advantage is that typically the same firms offer scooters in many different cities.  My personal concern is if you don't know a community and the quality of its roads, a scooter can be significantly more dangerous than a bike.

Bikes and scooters can also be an element of the tourism experience, in terms of recreational use--riding for fun--as opposed to transportation.  This is typical in beach destinations, such as Virginia Beach or Santa Monica.

Free2Move originally used GM vehicles.  But now that Peugeot has merged with Fiat Chrysler, it will be using those vehicles.

Itinerant car sharing.  Transit-centric tourism trips can be complemented by car sharing -- Zipcar is still available in many cities.  Sadly, Car2Go isn't any more.  But when it was, I used it in San Diego and Seattle as well as DC.  In DC and Portland, Free2Move is a one-way option, and the AAA-developed Gig operates in California and Seattle.  It's possible to use peer-to-peer car sharing services like Getaround and Turo too, and they are available in most places.

Taxis and ride hailing.  Personally, I don't use Uber and Lyft, but it's an option.  The advantage of those services is the app is universal, it works wherever the service is offered whereas local taxi services by definition are local.  

To use transit it helps to already know how to use transit.  So you can make sense of maps, stations, fares, passes, etc., even if you are otherwise unfamiliar with that particular system.  If you don't have experience on how to use a transit system, using transit to get around in an unfamiliar place, let alone relying upon it, can be difficult.

Transit wayfinding (and marketing).  I've argued that tourist destinations especially need to do a much better job at providing explanatory information and materials at community entrypoints--airports, railroad stations, transit stations at key destinations, and visitor centers.  Some transit agencies already do a good job.  Most don't.

And there is the tension between seeing visitors as a revenue source versus transportation demand management objectives.

For example, the Baltimore Downtown Visitor Center had a nice info center for transit, and before the Seattle Airport was served by light rail, it had a pretty good information rack about bus service.  But when they added light rail service, interestingly, the quality of information about provided about transit within the airport diminished.

Alexandria, Virginia has nice transit wayfinding signage at the King Street Metro Station and the Waterfront.

Clued into it from a fleeting image in a "Vera" television series episode, the cities of Newcastle and Gateshead in the UK have an excellent "Walk/Ride" wayfinding system in signs and maps.

-- WalkMap, Newcastle Gateshead visitation

-- Newcastle wayfinding design remit, fw.d design

Flickr photos by David Conti

Design by Cartledge Levene

The Ride side of the map would be easily repurposed as signage.  I don't know if they do that.  I seem to recall seeing the "Walk" sign in the Vera show footage, but I am not sure about Ride.