Overview
When advertising door-to-door accessibility between origin (usually urban areas) and destination (often remote areas), the tourists often facing missing links on the last stretch of the journey, i.e. from the hubs/regional railway station to the final destination.
Public transport is a challenging task in many hinterlands due to different factors that make the operation of regular lines difficult. Beyond that, locations with tourist frequentation are facing a variation in demand depending on seasons. Experiences have shown that a demand-responsive transport system (sharing/pooling/public), embedded in the trunk net of regular public transport, is a thankful enhancement in many cases: to cover the "last mile" in the travel chain of tourists and to provide for the inhabitants an alternative to car use for their daily ways.
While various operational models of intermediate services have been created and tested in several foregoing projects, operators are still confronted with institutional barriers and/or the sustained financing in the long run.
LAST MILE has aimed to find innovative and flexible solutions for sustainable regional mobility systems to ensure that visitors travel the ‘last mile’ of their travel in a sustainable manner, and to provide alternatives to cars for residents and their daily trips as well.
The project focused on the accessibility of transportation on the last link of the travel from origin to destination (so called "last mile"). It collected and analysed solutions to fill this gap with sustainable modes of transport. The project also examined environmental benefits as well as long term resource- and cost-efficiency
Funding
Results
In terms of activities, the project has organised a total of 79 policy learning events. It has also identified 12 good practices, produced 6 action plans and led to the increased capacity of 106 people. In terms of results, the project has succeeded in improving 2 regional development policies for a total amount of funds influenced of EUR 8,085,333.