Recap of the SMAPE Consortium Meeting in Bergen
The city of Bergen, Norway, hosted the third SMAPE consortium meeting on May 15-16, 2024. This gathering brought together project partners to discuss the progress they have made and to share the current status of their policy instruments. Against the backdrop of Bergen's landscapes, consortium members engaged in intensive discussions, sharing insights, progress, and plans for shared mobility solutions. The SMAPE partners had the chance to do site visits to experience how Bergen is dealing with shared mobility by fostering collaboration among policymakers, transport operators, and regional authorities.
Upcoming developments in SMAPE
On the first day, discussions centred around the upcoming reporting deadlines and the development of the upcoming tasks. Best practices were highlighted by presentations from POLIS and Autodelen.net, who shared their progress on preparing the final session for nine best practices and the completion of the Joint Methodology. This document will be used by project partners and European cities and regions in the future in order to measure the effectiveness of their shared mobility instruments.
The consortium also outlined future events and meetings, including the upcoming summer Academy in Ljubljana. This event aims to foster informal and relaxed discussions, deep diving into specific topics based on a co-creation activity taken by partners. New partners were also introduced, including Liudmyla Varavva from the Odesa City Council, adding new perspectives to the consortium. Furthermore, Friso Metz, part of the SMAPE Expert Group, delivered an insightful presentation on car sharing and behavioural science applied to mobility. The day was finalised with a bike tour during which project partners visited several Shared mobility hubs or “mobilpunkte” while discussing the strategies the city of Bergen followed by the city of Bergen to install them in specific areas and streets. By adopting these sustainable solutions since 2018, Bergen has been able to get closer to its ambitious sustainability goals to better meet the mobility demands of Bergen’s citizens.
Discussing common challenges in shared mobility
The second day focused on the current state of policy instruments, with presentations from representatives of Bremen, Bucharest, Bergen, Wallonia, Mantua, Ljubljana, and North Aegean. These presentations provided valuable insights into the current strategies and progress of each region. The consortium also held a thorough discussion on the structure of KPIs, aiming to measure the impact of changes in their policy instruments. Additionally, a co-creation session for the Summer Academy brainstormed topics such as municipal budgets, shared mobility action plans, communication strategies, and citizen engagement. The meeting finished with another site visit. In this case, the visit took the partners to the Fyllingsdalen Tunnel – The World’s Longest Cycling and Walking Tunnel. This site visit was also an opportunity to foster collaboration with another Interreg Project sharing common goals, the Active Cities project. This project is focused on increasing active mobility in North Sea cities through a combination of urban planning, multimodality and social innovations.
The SMAPE consortium left Bergen with a renewed commitment to collaboration and a shared vision for enhancing shared mobility policies across Europe. The next phases of the project promise continued knowledge exchange and policy work, driving forward the goals of the SMAPE initiative.
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