Data-driven Mobility Solutions with SCALE-UP
Interviews with Michiel Penne, SCALE-UP Project Coordinator (City of Antwerp / Smart Ways to Antwerp), Stella Aaltonen, Project Manager (City of Turku), Sergio Fernández Balaguer, Head of International & EU Projects (EMT Madrid) and Dirk Engels, Expert (Transport & Mobility Leuven) on data-driven mobility solutions with the SCALE-UP project.
Watch the video interviews directly.
What is the SCALE-UP project about?
Michiel Penne: Our project is about scaling-up; scaling-up in the governance way of scaling-up from a city towards a functional urban area, and up to the TEN-T level. But also it’s about integration of different parts of mobility systems.
Please tell us about SCALE-UP's mobility measures in Turku (Finland)
Stella Aaltonen: What we have doing in SCALE-UP so far, is that we have been looking into how to bring back to local train connections. We have the long-distance train connections, but how do we lobby for the local train connections. We have been looking into what kind of services are needed and what kind of political decisions and what kind of model should be there, in the future.
Another thing that we have been doing quite a lot of work on, is activation model for the schools and kindergartens, so that we would get them sustainably going back and forth. So far we have reached over 250 pupils and we got the feedback to process and they will scale it up to more schools so that will be able to benefit from the model that we have created in the project.
Then we have created a mobility map, which provides us with services that are available in our region. So everyone can go into the map and see all 40 different sources, all the way from walking to boating. What we have there is a real-time maintenance information for example for the winter time. We have data from the different measurement points and then also real-time data on the parking situation in the city centre.
Please tell us about SCALE-UP's mobility measures in Madrid (Spain)
Sergio Fernández Balaguer: We have also been helping the City redefine bus lines, whenever there is a new pedestrian area because, actually, under the scope of the project the City has deployed pedestrian areas in all the City districts.
Also we have been focussing on mobility hubs. Upgrading existing parking facilities and up-scaling the possibility of deploying Park-and-Rides, with different mobility services such as shared mobility, pick-up lockers for parcels, car-sharing, charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, optimising also the way we provide information to users.
Please tell us about SCALE-UP's mobility measures in Antwerp (Belgium)
Michiel Penne: In Antwerp we are working on a multi-modal route planner, which is unique, in the sense that it combines all kinds of transport, all kinds of modes of transport, that are not combined in any other route planner. Also, we’ve been now launching a notification for people who travel towards Antwerp to give a pop-up saying ‘Do you want to stop at a Park-and-Ride and continue your journey with public transport?’
One other measure we are quite proud of is our e-bike system for the Transport Region of Antwerp. The Transport Region is big. We really hope it can help people move around more sustainably in this Transport Region for longer distances, because an e-bike makes it possible to travel up to, let’s say, 10-15km. If you can cover that, then we can really make behavioural change happen.
What is the role of monitoring & evaluation in SCALE-UP?
Dirk Engels: In SCALE-UP we really believe that evaluation is a very important thing because we want to understand what we are doing and we want to explain that also to others. In many cases we don’t only measure what is changing when we implement a measure, but we want to understand really why it’s happening. For instance if we implement a measure to support cycling and we then have more cyclists, we try to understand: Is it the actions we do extra on the behaviour of people? Is it the infrastructure? Is in general promotion? We really want to understand that.
Learn more about SCALE-UP.
