Responsibility: Rural mobility between public and business interests | Third Rural Mobility Seminar (Seinäjoki, Finland)

On 5 June 2019, a new MAMBA Mobility Seminar took place in the town of Seinäjoki, in Finland. This was the third Rural Mobility Seminar in a series of six, each one of them focusing on one specific challenge within the area of rural mobility.

“Responsibility – Rural mobility between public and business interests” was the title of the event that gathered stakeholders, speakers and other people interested in developing and improving mobility in regions where transport is scarce. The one-day event tackled several subjects:  from European perspectives and policies on rural mobility to transport poverty. Furthermore, a number of good practices case and success stories regarding innovation and inventiveness when in comes to solving issues of rural transport were presented.

The seminar can be watched here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

The report that resulted from the 3rd MAMBA Rural Mobility Seminar can be found here.

Positive feedback on the new app “NaboRide”

In March, Vejle Kommune and NaboGo participated in an event in Smidstrup, Southern Denmark, where they launched the idea and work behind the App “NaboRide”. The app is created in connection to the EU project MAMBA and focuses on mobility in local areas.

The results of a user survey on mobility were presented during the meeting. The survey was aimed at the locals in the area and showed an overall positive approach to the app – both for children and adults. But it also showed that many locals have never used an app for this purpose and information is, therefore, key.

The app is aimed at both adults and children, but tours with children must be booked by their parents to ensure that children do not drive with strangers. The app is also intended for elderly people in the local area and includes the opportunity to help the elderly to pick up e.g. groceries and medicine and get rid of waste. It might help the elderly to stay longer in the area if they know how to use the app.

Overall the survey showed that residents in the local area are positive towards the app and that they believe that the app will have a positive effect on the lives and mobility in the area where the app is implemented.

BSSSC Board meeting in Cēsis

Between 8 and 10 of May, members of the MAMBA project took part in the BSSSC Board meeting that took place in Cēsis, Latvia. The topic of the meeting was to discuss strategies for the development of the Baltic Sea Region, when considering the implementation of transnational Smart Specialisation, with a focus on the Vidzeme region.

Liga Puriņa-Purīte, member of the MAMBA project, gave a presentation called “Transport solutions – priority topic of BSR Vidzeme Planning Region case: Transport on Demand pilot”, and shared more about the developments, activities and work in the field of rural mobility solutions, that are taking place in the Vidzeme region.

Mobility Hubs as a part of the mobility center

Working in the MAMBA project means networking and connecting stakeholders, learning from each other, exchanging ideas and even reassembling modules from other projects.

In our case we integrate a module from the “Masterplan Mobilität” – a mobility strategy which works on a large range of mobility activities – that was set up by the KielRegion, a supra-regional business development agency in Schleswig-Holstein and their “Mobility Agency” (Regionales Mobilitätsmanagement).

They developed the design basics of a mobility hub, that is supposed to be implemented throughout our region and worked out a framework contract with a manufacturer as well.

Mobility hubs link various modes of transport such as pedestrian and bicycle traffic, car sharing and public transport. They are designed to make it easier, for example, to transfer from bicycle to carpools, to a car-sharing car or to the bus, thereby promoting the mobility of locals and tourists alike. Depending on the local situation they can be designed differently – supplemented with a bus stop, e-charging points, car-sharing, car parks, a carpool, rental bicycles, modern and safe bike stands, digital departure boards or WiFi.

To encourage the municipalities of our county we promote the construction of these multi-vehicle mobility stations with 375.000 Euro and subsidise the eligible costs up to a rate of 75 %.

The next step is to integrate the mobility hubs into our mobility center – the interactive website, showing the mobility offers in our county.

Mobility Congress in Berlin

National and international experts from labour unions, associations, politics and from the business world participated at the Mobility Congress in Berlin. The event took place on the 8 and 9 of May and was hosted by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

The attendants discussed topics connected to mobility transition, with 14 experts around the world presenting their good-practice cases about a mobility transition pursued climate change, social justice and economical sustainability.

The two congress days were filled with expert lectures, discussions and workshops. Annika Schmiedek-Inselmann from Diaconie of Schleswig-Holstein took part in the two interesting congress days.

Launch of MAMBA database of good practice cases

On April 23rd, the MAMBA good practice cases database was launched at the Nordregio office in Stockholm, during a small scale event attended by partners from Nordregio and the Municipality of Trelleborg.

The database was developed by the Municipality of Trelleborg and its aim is to comprise best practice examples, both from MAMBA partners, but also from external ones, from eleven countries in Europe. The cases presented range from car or ridesharing services, mobility centres, transport-on-demand and others. The interactive map offers the possibility of zooming in, searching by postal code, latitude and longitude, and also of filtering information with the help of several criteria, such as: category of services, status, country and state. The database offers comprehensive information about the type of services provided in each of the cases, the initiators and also the partners that support them.

Launching event of Mobility Center and transport-on-demand in Vidzeme

The launching event of the Mobility Centre and transport-on-demand service in Vidzeme (Latvia) took place on 4 March in the municipality of Mazsalaca county and on 12 and 13  March in the municipalities of the Alūksne county.

Since the Mazsalaca county and the Aluksne county are two of MAMBA’s pilot areas in Latvia where transport-on-demand will be tested, meetings with local residents and stakeholders were organised in March 2019. These meetings were both informative and  launching events, giving citizens the opportunity to ask questions as well as advising the project team on improving the service they were planning. The meetings were also filmed by a local television company and a report of the event was broadcasted in the national news afterwards. See the videos here: Mazsalaca county and Alūksne county.

In both counties, it is planned that the “on-demand” service will be piloted differently and coordinated by the newly launched Mobility Centre. Its coordinator will accept both public calls and join destinations of trips in one single route, as well as transfer information to the service provider. In order to register as a user, local inhabitants living in the pilot areas must fill in a designated form.
Locals who attended the launching event confirmed existing deficiencies in public transportation, making their everyday life more difficult, especially when in need of a doctor or hospital treatment. Simultaneously, citizens admitted that a transport-on-demand service would greatly ease their everyday life struggles, facilitating trips to e.g. the supermarket or the library. The opportunity to call for a trip to attend and return from a cultural event in the region was of particular interest. This would increase opportunities for locals to actively participate in public life.
The project team has repeatedly acknowledged that ”on-demand” transport is a flexible form of transport services, it does not run on specific schedules and routes, and is designed specifically to enhance the welfare of local citizens since it is tailored according to their needs. This means that citizens are encouraged to give feedback even after the service has been launched, to improve accessibility in the countryside.

The transport-on-demand model could solve problems especially relevant within border areas with low demographics, a lack of passengers and less public transportation coverage. As the representatives of the Vidzeme Planning Region pointed out, no citizen should be punished for their place of residency, and it is unacceptable that daily needs should be adapted to the bus schedule.

Residents are addressed with four key messages, namely that “transport-on-demand takes you …
… from the place where you are,
… to a place where you want to go,
… at a time that suits you,
… with people you know.”

Photos: ©Vidzeme Planning Region, Launching events and meetings with locals and project stakeholders in both pilot territories

MAMBA has participated at Multidisciplinary Ideation Workshop addressing transport poverty

The Horizon2020 project “HiReach – innovative solutions to cope with transport poverty” has invited a number of mobility and transportation experts, start-uppers, industry professionals, entrepreneurs, designers, researchers, public officials, and representatives of vulnerable groups to a Multidisciplinary Ideation Workshop in Brussels on 27 and 28 March 2019. On behalf of MAMBA, the lead partner sent Hakan Uraz from REM Consult to join this highly relevant event in order to gather insights for future MAMBA activities and to disseminate the results produced so far.

HiReach focuses on the development of new tools and business models to improve accessibility for areas and communities in need. By combining different attributes of available transport concepts and bottom-up initiatives with new operational schemes and IT applications, HiReach will explore viable business models for small scale, modular and easily replicable mobility services (e.g. community transport services, ridesharing, minibus pooling, etc.) that can be provided at affordable prices and/or with minimum subsidies.

The aim of the workshop was to design and implement new products, services, and solutions to tackle transport poverty and make mobility more inclusive. It was organised in an interactive setting following the “Lean Service Creation (LSC) methodology, a design process, set of tools, and handbook that combines best practices of service design thinking, lean startup, and agile development”, as the organisers put it. Six groups were formed and worked on solutions to mobility problems of different target groups, which were represented by a fictitious but representative character of such a target group, so-called personas. In different stages of the process participants moved from analysing the problem, the needs and possible solutions to finally presenting and pitching their solutions to the other participants at the end of these 1,5 days.

As main take-aways for MAMBA, it became clear that the concept of “transport poverty” is widespread around Europe and has common, replicating aspects, but naturally also important differences depending on the local context, be it geographically, culturally or socio-economically. It can be a major source of exclusion and detrimental to the quality of life and well-being of some parts of the population or entire regions. Solutions to tackle this issue need creativity, courage and bravery, but most importantly they need to address the problem at different levels – social, economic, technological, political/administrative and last but not least cultural.

MAMBA has raised high interest among the participants and opportunities for future collaboration are being explored.

Workshop with “Dorfkümmerern” in Rendsburg

The MAMBA Team of the Diaconie of Schleswig-Holstein and their associated partner, the Academy for Rural Areas of Schleswig-Holstein (ALR), jointly organised a Workshop with a number of village workers who take care of other inhabitants, called “Dorfkümmerer”. The event took place in Rendsburg on 4 March 2019 and the day was structured in two parts.

The first part fell under the responsibility of ALR, who organised and mediated a fruitful discussion, where participants talked about their tasks as village workers (“Dorfkümmerer”) and about the essence of their employment.

The Diaconie organised the second part of the workshop day, where participants were invited to discuss the accessibility of social services in remote areas and share visions on mobility and accessibility of services. The input offered by the participating “Dorfkümmerer” is of immense value for the work that the Diaconie and MAMBA carry out and will feed into the design of the regional service-to-people mobility pilot that the Diaconie is about to develop.

Pilot project implementation in fields of service-to-people mobility

On Friday 29 March 2019, Annika Schmiedek-Inselmann (Diaconie Schleswig-Holstein) visited the mayor of Hallig Hooge and participated in a town hall meeting regarding public services to discuss the implementation of the MAMBA’s service-to-people pilot in the region.

Hallig Hooge is located in the Wadden Sea in front of the western coastline of Schleswig-Holstein in the North Sea. A so-called Hallig differs from an island, since it can be completely overflown, making lasting mobility solutions even more complicated. This is also true for the 100 people who live on Hallig Hooge, in very specific rural living conditions.

The pilot project of the Diaconie, a “mobile social counselling” for the inhabitants of Hallig Hooge was presented during the town hall meeting and found great interest among the attendees. Next steps of the project comprise the development of a tailored concept that will facilitate the implementation of a pilot action in cooperation with the inhabitants.