Integrated high-quality mobility corridor

Summary

The city of Ljubljana wants to improve mobility of people and tackle congestion in the city centre among other measures through an integrated high-quality mobility corridor. This corridor runs through the main city avenue and offers attractive sustainable transport options to citizens. The goal is to increase the share of walking, cycling and public transport, which will lower noise and pollutant emissions in the city centre. At the local and national level, a high speed bus corridor is an innovation that paves the way to even more efficient future collective transport schemes (tram-train project).

Implementing sustainable mobility

The main arterial roads inside the motorway ring leading into Ljubljana’s city centre are heavily congested. These are Barjanska, Slovenska and especially Dunajska road. To remedy this situation, Ljubljana created a high-quality mobility corridor that connects the northern and southern part of the city through the city centre and towards neighbouring municipalities. This corridor integrates a variety of measures and different transport modes. It increases the effectiveness and hence attractiveness of collective and alternative transport modes. The city hopes that the development will be a turning point in the modal split of transport in Ljubljana, which takes a longer period of time than just the lifetime of the project.

The main objectives were:

• To improve travel time reliability with installation of PT priority at intersections;
• To show by means of different models and surveys that the implementation of dedicated bus lanes has positive environmental, social, psychological and economic impacts;
• To increase the number of satisfied PT commuters due to reliable, comfortable, customer friendly, safer and less polluting PT;
• To improve the conditions for safe and pleasant cycling and walking in the corridor and promote it as daily transport mode;
• To demonstrate that parking policy (reducing the number of on-road parking places) can be an efficient tool for reducing motorised traffic.
• To demonstrate efficiency of mobility management plans.

Measures include a new Park and Ride facility with 1220 parking places on the Northern side of the corridor, which has been operating since October 2010, and a preparation of the P+R system on the Southern part. This bus corridor is not only a local but a national innovation that will pave the way to even more efficient collective transport schemes in the future. Ljubljana is going through a phase of planning and construction where citizens inevitably need to adapt and re-think their mobility options. The city administration sees this as an opportunity to affect people’s travel behaviour in a positive way.

At the local level, the particular interest of this measure consists in increasing the effectiveness of collective and alternative transport modes as well as increasing its attractiveness and reaching a turning point in the modal split of urban transport.

Progress

Ljubljana has conducted an assessment of the current situation, which has shown that new dedicated bus lanes need to be extended from Slovenska road to both sides of the corridor crossing the city centre. The new and improved bus service has been introduced together with strong marketing activities. The study made clear that two new Park and Ride facilities in combination with a high-quality corridor are essential for introducing an alternative fast travel option to the city centre.

Outcomes

With the conclusion of the city’s inner circle (bridge connecting Njegoševa and Roška streets, end of August 2012) the main precondition for the closure of the corridor’s central part for motorized traffic (except PT) has been achieved. The central part of the main road in the city centre is therefore dedicated to people instead of transport. Non-motorized means of mobility and PT will – after decades of dominating personal car traffic – finally get the upper hand. With the already established P+R Stožice at the northern side of the corridor and evident progress on overcoming state regulated barriers (flood protection) regarding planning and construction of P+R Barje at the southern side of the corridor, the  integrated high-quality mobility corridor became reality at the end of the ELAN project. Almost all of Ljubljana’s measures contributed to this achievement. Modern, environmentally friendly hybrid, CNG (1.11-LJU) and EURO5 buses with safe & secure features (5.2-LJU), adapted for special needs and demand responsive services (6.1-LJU), with new customers that have switched to PT convinced by individualized mobility marketing (4.1-LJU), Google’s transit portal (8.5-LJU), real time information panels (8.4-LJU) or because they will reach their destination sooner due to PT priority at intersections (8.1-LJU) will only be part of the corridor’s entire picture. Additional cycling lanes, a nicer walking environment and last but not least, dedicated lines for PT along the entire North-South corridor are planned to be added until the end of 2013. As stated in the City’s “Transport Policy Proposal until 2020” similar measures as implemented in ELAN along the corridor of measure 2.1-LJU are also envisaged to be implemented along other main corridors in Ljubljana