Overview
As part of the European Transport Strategy major investments have been made in order to restore the balance between transport modes and to increase the use of public transport, soft modes, rail and maritime transport. ADDED VALUE has implemented soft measures in eleven different cities and regions all over Europe to make more use of big investments and infrastructures made for alternative, energy saving transport modes (already in place or being planned and implemented during the project). Soft measures covered both mobility management and travel awareness campaigns.
It was the aim of ADDED VALUE to add value to big investments and infrastructures made for alternative, energy saving transport modes, which were either already in place or were being planned and implemented during the project time. This has been achieved by applying marketing methods and information and awareness campaigns to make better use of these infrastructures.
In the short term:
- Easy access to knowhow was provided
- Cost-efficient high impact applications have been shown
- Synergies between energy efficiency, transport planning and land use planning have been established
In the long term,
- New standards for mobility management connected to infrastructure were established
- A general rise in the awareness of the energy saving potentials of simple marketing has been achieved
- A wide dissemination of the results in order to decrease the barriers for this kind of mobility management has been achieved
- The topic was transferred to countries where it wasn’t already well-established, namely to all New Members States and candidate states, as well as to Southern Europe and Ireland.
Step 1, checking demand and planning phase:
Which problems had to be solved? Who were the beneficiaries? What kind of solutions were appropriate? Would the solutions be accepted? How to use invested money and resoures best?
Example: The Swiss city of Zürich wanted to increase public transport use. They planned to build a brand new metro system. When they asked the citizens about it, they found out that those were against the new metro system and were much more in favour of extending and modernising the existing tram - which by the way was also the much more cost-efficient option. This was a complete reversal of what decision makers had in mind at the beginning.
Step 2: construction phase
In this phase it was important to inform the affected citizens about what was going on. For example, when building a new tram line, potential users should be informed about its services and benefits. But citizens also needed to know how long the disruption caused by the construction would take and what could be done to alleviate it. Upset shop owners were also dependent on this information and everyone was happier if he or she could not only bring in complaints, but also own ideas.
Example: The German city of Leipzig successfully carried out such a campaign during the re-organisation of their tram system, accompanied by major construction work. The case study is well-documented within the EU-funded MOST project. Negative impacts were minimised. During the construction of a new tram line, the Portuguese city of Almada also carried out a similar information and awareness campaign within the STEP BY STEP project.
Step 3, start of operations:
Generally speaking, the opening of a new infrastructure is special and should be organised like an event, which usually happens with new highways or tunnels - with attending politicians and media / press. This should also be done with less spectacular infrastructure such as the opening of a new cycle track. It has often a much higher participation by users and can continue into a long lasting public party.
In the Austrian city Graz a new and spectacular bicycle underpass for cyclists was opened (supported by CIVITAS Trendsetter). Graz made a contest to find a name for this underpass via newspapers - getting surprisingly high participations by the citizens. The new underpass was inaugurated with a big party and achieved high media coverage. Today it is probably the best known new bicycle infrastructure in Graz and a symbol for the more
Results
- Information increase, including recognition of the implemented measures & campaigns, and improved perception of soft measures to tackle transport problems in cities by end users, decision makers and the media – namely personal benefits and quality of life increase.
- Integration of mobility management, soft modes and PT infrastructure, and travel awareness as a standard in the routines of key actors and decision makers in cities/ regions (e.g. mission statements, budgets, job/ task description of planners).
- Set up of local/ regional partnerships e.g. between different administrative departments like transport, environment, health, tourism, land use etc. and key actors.
- To share experience and disseminate information in countries where the issue is not in the agenda such as Ireland, EU Member States joining during the 2004 Enlargement and Southern Europe countries.