SWITCH - Encouraging a SWITCH from car-based to active mobility using personalised information and communication technology approaches
Overview
Background & policy context:
The number of trips of the average urban inhabitant per year has grown steadily in recent years – but we are actually moving (our bodies) less. Every day, millions of trips are made by car or other motorised private vehicles as well as with public transport, while only a small percentage of trips are made by active transport modes, such as walking and cycling. Many people even talk about our sedentary lifestyles as an epidemic because the resulting negative impacts on our health and quality of life has reached unprecedented levels.
These negative trends can be reversed: A new urban mobility culture is blooming. Most cities aspire to create more people-friendly places to encourage walking and cycling by establishing new services to cater for pedestrians (i.e. wayfinding, real time multimodal information, shared and multi-modal mobility solutions) and by designing suitable infrastructure to make walking and cycling safer and more comfortable.
Objectives:
Car traffic is a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and impacts urban quality of life in many ways. SWITCH’s main objective is to reduce GHG-emissions and primary energy consumption by replacing car trips by switching to walking and cycling (active modes) for short urban trips. Breaking car based routines not only impacts mode choice for short trips but opens people’s mind to other options for other journeys. Active modes, like walking and cycling are the basis of healthy, environmentally friendly multimodal travel behaviour with synergies to public transport.
Methodology:
The SWITCH-approach uses personalised travel planning approaches to encourage people to switch car trips to active modes. The innovation comes from:
- The combination of tried and tested personalised travel planning approaches
- Their application to target groups of persons in life changing moments on large scale
- The application of ICT solutions like Smartphone applications and Intelligent Health's Beat the Street system
- The use of arguments from public health to motivate behavioural change.
Five local campaigns will be implemented using a three-step approach: Raise awareness, impart knowledge and motivate behavioural change. An overall process and quantitative output evaluation in integrated in the campaign. A set of training documents, workshops and webinars will be developed to stimulate cities outside the consortium to follow the SWITCH-approach.
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