Overview
The MOST project aimed at consolidating the know-how developed in previous national and EU-projects like MOMENTUM, MOSAIC and INPHORMM, and developed a Mobility Management methodology.
Transport-related problems rank high on the list of concerns for European cities and regions and the way travel is organised needs to be improved, at the individual and regional level.
Traditional solutions, such as infrastructure improvements and regulations, are not enough to cope with these problems: an integrated approach, that makes use of existing infrastructures, is needed.
Mobility Management can therefore be seen as a complementary, cost-effective approach to help raise the quality of mobility-related services. It is an innovative demand-oriented approach that establishes new partnerships to provide quality mobility services.
This leads to improved accessibility and a change in attitudes towards sustainable mobility, by linking Mobility Management and general transport policy.
MOST aimed to further develop and to spread the concept of Mobility Management in several ways:
- Analysing existing Mobility Management strategies, especially their impacts,
- Developing innovative Mobility Management strategies
- Initiating Mobility Management in regions of Europe where it is not so well established,
- Developing and applying a European monitoring and evaluation strategy that enabled comparisons between all MOST research and demonstration sites in order to draw general conclusions
- Analysing framework conditions for Mobility Management and, on this basis, formulating policy and implementation strategies and scenarios,
- Producing a framework and recommendations for the design and implementation of future Mobility Management applications,
- Spreading the concept of Mobility Management through sophisticated dissemination, training and exploitation strategies, and by using synergies with the European ECOMM and EPOMM initiatives.
The methodological approach was twofold:
1. Collecting of impact assessment data in order to assess changes in mobility awareness and behaviour.
A Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit, the MOST MET, was developed to ensure comparability of results and to guide the demonstration sites with their monitoring and evaluation strategies. The impact assessment was undertaken monitoring five distinct categories of impacts:
- changes with respect to knowledge of implemented Mobility Management services and instruments,
- changes with respect to usage of these services and instruments,
- changes with respect to acceptance and satisfaction with the implemented services and instruments,
- changes with respect to the mobility behaviour of individuals,
- changes on a broader systems level (e.g. reduction of congestion, environmental impacts).
2. Investigation of the Mobility Management implementation process.
The implementation process was investigated by using an adapted total quality management tool that was developed by MOST. This helped to achieve an understanding of barriers and supportive factors for Mobility Management and helped to better interpret the results of the impact assessment. The tool served to investigate leadership and project coordination, project design and strategy, human resources management, partnerships and financial resources, processes and implementation.
This methodology was broken down into 4 work-packages:
- Definition of the conceptual framework
- Policy and implementation framework
- Monitoring and evaluation
- Dissemination, training.
Funding
Results
The MOST project developed the MOST Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit, providing different assessment methods, objectives and levels.
To build this toolkit, MOST conducted field test demonstrations grouped into six thematic fields:
- educational institutions (schools, universities),
- tourism (rural areas or cities),
- health institutions (hospitals, centres for outpatients or disabled persons),
- site development (new or restructured sites like leisure or business parks),
- temporary sites / events (cultural and sports events, construction sites),
- mobility centres and mobility consulting (for companies, cities or whole regions).
On the basis of the research results of each individual site, MOST elaborated key conclusions about successful strategies for the planning, implementation and evaluation of Mobility Management. A Mobility Management scheme is thus split into 7 key phases:
- Start-Up Phase: Definition of the problem to be solved and preparation of a blueprint plan
- Involvement of stakeholders and extension to clients and end-users
- Base-line Analysis: use of surveys to ask users about their travel behaviour and their future needs. This leads to quantified and measurable objectives derived of the results of the base line study.
- Conducting a survey tailored to the problems at stake and the target group of users; continuous monitoring can also be undertaken.
- Designing of Mobility Management services and instruments tailored to the needs of the addressed user groups. The provision of basic services first is recommended, as these often have the greatest impact on sustainable mobility. Then, MOST recommends a mix of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ measures (built on on existing infrastructure) that cover different transport modes.
- Measuring impacts through surveys and/or counts before and after the implementation of Mobility Management, in order to determine the usual mode of travel and then the modified travel habits of the target population.
- Efficiency of the implementation process assessment, involving all stakeholders (i.e. clients as well as uer groups)
Technical Implications
N/A.
Policy implications
As they are an important factor for facilitating Mobility Management. MOST for the first time undertook a structured analysis of European, national, regional and local frameworks.
In each of these frameworks, MOST proved that Mobility Management can successfully be triggered and implemented by various clients (most common are city or regional administrations or PT providers), as long as they seek co-operation and good co-ordination.
Moreover, Mobility Management can be applied in various thematic fields on a city or site level and can from local and very concentrated actions up to wider scale approaches covering whole regions.
Lastly, MOST made Mobility Management more accessible by giving more insight into the process of Mobility Management, while providing evidence of positive impacts of mobility management:
- increase awareness
- promote Mobility Management and its different options among decision makers, financing bodies
- develop new mobility services
- enhance the accessibility of certain destinations and, hence increase opportunities for modal choice
- increase the use of sustainable modes (or slow down / stop a negative trend)
- reduce car use (or work against the continuous growth)
- address traffic and air quality problems.
These issues need further research:
- Further investigation is needed on the costs and benefits of Mobility Management
- Links with non-transport policies such as energy, health, environment, housing, planning, business development etc.
- Improvements using Information Technology and Telematics should also be researched, as well as new applications.
