cities.multimodal news and announcements

2019 has been the year of multimodality in Aarhus. In the pilot area, two mobility points have been constructed and the citizens are eager to start using them. The mobility points are amongst the measures implemented in Aarhus in 2019 that will improve the conditions for living in the city centre without a car. In April, The City of Aarhus made an agreement with a Swedish e-scooter company on a provision of 150 e-scooters in a shared scheme.

In early 2019 Gdansk, the number one city for cycling in Poland, launched their Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) in English (PDF). With its geographical position the city is an important node in the Polish transport system, the city has developed harbor and airport connections and a highly developed transport infrastructure. However, prerequisites for the urban mobility where in need of an improvement.

This year´s CIVITAS Forum was held in Graz, Austria from October 2-4 2019 and it was the biggest one in it´s history! Over 600 participants from all over Europe and beyond took part in 3 days filled with presentations, sessions, discussions and networking. The cities.multimodal project was represented together with BSReletric and SUMBA at a stand to showcase the experiences from the Baltic Sea Region.

Autumn is approaching and so it's time for the 17th EUROPEANMOBILITYWEEK organized all over Europe from 16th-22nd of September. The EUROPEANMOBILITYWEEK is a campaign promoting sustainable mobility options to the general population, the theme for 2019 is safe walking and cycling. The campaign is originally an initiative of the European Commission - Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport.

During fall 2019 three peer reviews will take place in the partner cities Riga, Gdansk and Vilnius. More information about peer reviews can be found here.

The report by the German Federal Statistical Office clearly reveals that pupils and kinds are not safe on their way to school and kindergarten. One reason are the so-called "parent taxis". In order to ensure that their kids arrive at schools and kindergarten safely, they bring them by car. Considering statistics about children as a car passenger in accidents, driving the kids is only an alleged feeling of safety. Particularly the increase  of cars in front of schools and kindergartens makes the situation even worse for those kids still walking or cycling.

Within our project, the 10 city partners plan and implement a variety of different measures and activities – locally. But we would not be a project, founded by the Baltic Sea region programme, if not the aspect of cross-border...

“Welcome to the first cities.multimodal talkshow and these are our guests today…”!
Discussions about how mobility points can solve the challenges in sustainable mobility, panelists explaining how they work in MPs and a  (quite) critical audience to convince!
This setting took place in the first cities.multimodal train-the-trainer workshop, in connection with the 3^rd project meeting in Aarhus!

From 16^th – 17^th May 2019 our project partners and their local traffic planners were travelling to the Hanseatic Cities Bremen and Hamburg to learn from the cities’ experiences on how to plan and build mobility points. Today both cities have a dense network of these hubs and gave great advice on integrated mobility offers, location finding and communication strategies.

The cities.multimodal project consortium met in Aarhus, the second largest city of Denmark, for their third project meeting in mid-April. On the previous evening we got together at the Aarhus Street Food area, where we could taste all kind of different foods from all over the world and which is located in a very interesting venue.
On the next day we travelled out of the center to the meeting venue – the department for Technic and Environment is located in a very modern building directly in one of the recent developing areas of Aarhus.

IT solutions for travel planning like e.g. apps and websites that assist citizens and travellers in planning their journeys are important for encouraging multimodality.

The research for travel related IT-solutions in the project, conducted by the Institute of Baltic Studies (IBS) is based on three models for data collection. Firstly, a desk research has been conducted to map existing travel planning solutions elsewhere in Europe. The desk research provided an understanding of which kind of solutions that already exist and are technically possible to develop.

Charging cars without any CO2 emissions is now possible in the municipality of Karlskrona thanks to the hybrid powerplant ’Energiraffen’! The powerplant which can be found in the harbor area is not only for e-cars, other electrical vehicles such as e-bikes can also be charged. The generated energy will for example be used for charging the municipality’s own e-cars.

During two intensive days in Aarhus, Denmark the cities.multimodal project partners gathered for both the third project meeting and a training session. The training was facilitated in cooperation with Claus Köllinger from the urban mobility observatory ELTIS.

What are the success factors for well functioning mobility points and what kind of an impact does a mobility point have in increasing multimodality. These questions are investigated and answered in Renita Pais' master's thesis, in which the cities.multimodal partner cities Rostock, Vilnius and Pskov act as targets for the scope.

“It was a great, productive and positive experience to have you here and I am very happy for the respectful sharing of ideas we had. This is very positive for Kalmar” summarizes Robert Dahlstöm, project manager,  the first cities.multimodal peer review in Kalmar on Januar 17th 2019.

To reach the climate targets private car traffic must be reduced. A municipal travelling habit survey made by the Swedish Association of Green Motorists (Gröna Bilister) shows that car dependency can be reduced in medium-sized cities and commuter towns.

From 15-17th of October the cities.multimodal consortium gathered for the 2nd partner meeting in the capital of Latvia, Riga. We spent 1,5 days of intensive work on diferent activities, with  discussions, brainstorming, creative writing excercises and planning for the upcoming 2 years.

Mr Angelo Meulemann from the SHARE-North project joined us for an inspirational presentation about the mobihubs concept and provided inut for further discussion on our planned mobility points in the project.

The City of Gdansk has recently launched two pedestrian counters as a part of the cities.multimodal project. The counters have appeared in two main city districts located in the pilot area, namely Wrzeszcz and City Centre. Thanks to the temperature recognition technology, the results achieved will enable urban decision-making and planning processes even more pedestrian-friendly. There is no doubt that being easily portable from one spot to another around the city makes them unique and highly useful, e.g. for Living Streets campaigns or temporary road pedestrianization.

Riga has set a goal to achieve the status of the Smart City by integrating cross-sectorial innovations into transportation, housing, energy and public administration. Also, the “Sustainable Development Strategy of Riga-2030” sets our ambition “to become an internationally recognisable metropolis with high quality of life, innovative economy, smart and efficient management of the resources, modern administration and active participation of city residents”.

The City of Aarhus, like many other European cities is growing. In 2030, it is estimated around 50,000 people will have been added to the current population of 325,000 a growth of more than 10 %. 30,000 more jobs will move to the city and approximately 20,000 more cars if there are no changes to the mobility patterns.