What were the most successful urban mobility strategies during COVID-19?
A summary of a comprehensive report in partnership with EIT Urban Mobility, a team composed of BABLE, CARNET, CTAG, DTU, and UPC, with the support of Miljöstrategi AB
It marks approximately one year since the beginning of the first wave in Europe of Virus SARS-CoV-2, also known as COVID-19. The sudden appearance of the pandemic was certainly unexpected and led to unrepresented and unprecedented measures. Thus, when we analyse the mobility system, what really has changed? How did local governments across Europe respond to the new landscape in the mobility sector and what measures will linger after the pandemic within our societies?
“At the beginning of the pandemic, people were just waiting for it to go away and quickly return to the normal. But once it was clear that it was not going back to what it used to be, people started to look towards the future. Thus, the window of opportunity is more open than ever. Politicians should not only be worried about the pandemic but also about how to change their cities for the future.”
- Peter Vest, Business Creation Manager, EIT Urban Mobility Innovation Hub North
The Study — Urban Mobility Strategies during COVID-19
In partnership with EIT Urban Mobility, a team composed of BABLE, CARNET, CTAG, DTU, and UPC, with the support of Miljöstrategi AB wanted to address this topic. Thus, a survey was conducted across 16 European cities to understand and analyse mobility strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. This built the basis for a study on urban mobility strategies during COVID-19.
The full report analyses the urban mobility strategies deployed by cities since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each chapter provides extensive insights on aspects such as sustainable urban mobility system requirements, the impact of the virus so far on urban mobility, the role of innovation in this context, and the economic impact on new mobility.
Find the study here:
Discuss the key findings with the authors at the online event on the 23rd of March 2021, 11:00-12:15 CET. Register here!
Challenges, requirements, and strategies of sustainable urban mobility systems
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has had a strong impact on societies around the world, the analysis shows that cities have not reconsidered their long-term strategies but have instead adapted short-term actions to the temporary requirements brought by the pandemic. Such new requirements are also not believed to be planned to remain in the mid- and long-term future plans; however, they can be used to accelerate some of the strategies. Thus, some of the urban mobility challenges and requirements previously (seen below) are still prevalent in pandemic times.
Accelerating change in urban mobility systems during COVID-19
Considering immediate changes, what changes has COVID-19 brought to the urban mobility field? The acceleration opportunity from the given scenario is evident mostly in the following aspects:
- The increase of tactical urbanism to temporarily reclaim road space (for widening sidewalks or provide more room for bar terraces) can lead to a permanent redesign of public space to improve neighbourhood walkability.
- The development of the bike network (both at the level of urban lanes and express inter-urban corridors) as a response to the decrease of public transport capacity can consolidate this mode of transportation.
- The increase in e-commerce and home deliveries during the pandemic can propel cities to implement actions to improve urban freight transport.
- The time factor management has emerged as a key factor to deal with COVID-19 (for instance, fixing time slots to exit home during the lockdown) and point to the interest of time regulations to share some public spaces between different uses.
- Neighbourhood life under restrictions, with fewer cars on the streets, may raise the social awareness of the quality of life associated with clean and calm environments with proximity services.
- The intense use of digital technologies to track the pandemic can foster the use of mobility data and applications of Mobility as a Service.
- The acceleration of technologies such as autonomous driving, multifunctionality increase and air cleaning solutions research and development have been continued by industrial players.
“In city administrations there has been a redeployment of strategic personnel into other urgent tasks to tackle the pandemic, as well as challenges with home-working and increased sick leave. There is a lot of willingness to do more; however, it is challenging for cities to allocate resources, especially for strategic issues.”
- Dr. Anna Clark, Innovation Lifecycle Manager, EIT Urban Mobility Innovation Hub North
Innovation in cities as an enabler of the transition
Working with innovation across boundaries and silos internally in a city administration is a challenge. Even more of a challenge is working both across silos and with diverse groups of external stakeholders. Understanding each other and creating trust and a common vision is key to find the best solutions and innovative measures. Thus, multi-stakeholder involvement (external and internal) is key for the success of innovation in the urban context.
Also, resources are found as another very important point when improving urban mobility, or any other type of urban innovation. On the one hand, staff or general capacity of the city administration level and an innovation team/officer are found to be crucial for driving the innovation strategy within a city, acting as a cross-silo integration. On the other hand, finance is also a pressing issue. In times of crisis, both of these resources tend to be scarce and affect how the city will manage its future work. Above, you can find the needs of the surveyed cities to address these concerns. One of the best ways understood from the study to tackle financing challenges is to use public-private partnerships as a development mechanism.
Looking forward!
The pandemic and social distancing measures have fundamentally affected the forces shaping our cities. They have affected the housing market, the layout of economic activity, and mobility flows.
Active mobility, such as cycling and walking, are clear winners due to the pandemic. However, single-car ownership has increased and public transport has suffered a hard hit too. As a result, cities have fought back by reclaiming urban space and limiting traffic in their centres, trying to push all healthy and sustainable paths for urban mobility and development. Lastly, the pandemic may produce future shifts through the lens of the interplay between transportation, housing and job markets, which have to be carefully calculated in future strategic decisions.
Conclusions and Recommendations:
(Full list can be found in the conclusion of the report)
For local governments:
- In balance with available resources, moving up the “maturity scale” on organising for innovation and data-driven decision making is advised. In addition, identifying a broader set of relevant stakeholders and collaborating with them to implement new mobility strategies and solutions would have a positive impact.
- Allocating a larger share of public space to sustainable transport modes can be helpful to tackle the shift towards individual mobility introduced by the pandemic (bike lanes and other uses). These measures should be accompanied by price-based complementary travel demand management tools to overcome their potential negative effects.
For policymakers and funding programs on national and EU level:
- It is advisable to adapt transit services (to avoid car-dependence) to households’ suburbanisation trends and to the agglomeration drift of companies that are triggered by telecommuting broad adoption.
- Providing support in terms of models, tools and mechanisms for scaling and spreading best practice in urban mobility to all cities — despite their size and maturity level — is recommended.
For mobility service providers:
- Nurture-structured collaboration with the local government while learning how to contribute to the mobility system’s improvement and finding a working business model within that frame is advisable.
- Communication campaigns targeting users’ risk perception during and after the pandemic need to be implemented. There is an urgent need to ensure that lost ridership of public transport is directed towards micro-mobility options instead of private cars. Micromobility options are of high importance as they are considered as access modes to public transit.
This Blogpost features content from the Study: Urban mobility strategies during COVID-19.
Content and Report Authors: Albert Gragera (University of Barcelona & Danish Technical University), Daniel Albalate (University of Barcelona), Germá Bel (University of Barcelona), Gretel Schaj (BABLE GmbH), Hector Cañas (BABLE GmbH), Inés Aquilué (CARNET — Centro de Innovación y Tecnología de la UPC), Jana Helder (BABLE GmbH), Lara Espindola (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), Miguel Mósca (BABLE GmbH), Mikael Edelstam (Miljöstrategi AB), Miquel Marti (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), Nikita Shetty (BABLE GmbH), Paul Barton (BABLE GmbH), Dr. Philipp Riegebauer (BABLE GmbH), Pierre Filohn (BABLE GmbH) Raúl Urbano (Centro Tecnológico de Automoción de Galicia), Yoann Le Petit (EIT Urban Mobility)
