Mobility and Life-style Analysis
Project:
Movilization - towards accessible cities
Coordinating City:
Gemeente Utrecht (Verkeer en Vervoer) – Dipl.-Ing. Ruud Ditewig, Utrecht
Project team in ISOE:
Funding:
Europäische Kommission/ EUROPE AID
Cooperationsbüro, Lateinamerikanisches Direktorat
Project partner:
IBC (International Bicycle Consultancy) –
Dipl.-Geo. Ton Daggers, Utrecht
Institut für Straßen- und Verkehrswesen, Lehrstuhl Straßenplanung und
Straßenbau/ FOVUS, Universität Stuttgart – Dr.-Ing. Walter Vogt
Duration :
03/2005-12/2007
MOVILIZATION – toward accessible cities
"MOVILIZATION - towards accessible cities" is a project funded by the European Commission in order to implement cycling promotion measures for bicycle use in European and Latin American cities. By means of developing a toolkit for cities, which contains campaign materials, implementation of (simple and cheap) traffic measures, and the development and implementation of traffic education materials, this project aims to improve cycling conditions and therefore the cycling climate in the participating cities. Activities of the MOVILIZATION project are the preparation, development and launching of educational, promotional and traffic campaigns combined with the implementation of relatively simple and cost effective traffic measurements. In this the member cities are assisted by external partners who provide external input and knowledge transfer.
Needs for Tools and Knowledge to Promote Cycling
Experiences of the project partners in a previous project “Integration of cycling in the traffic engineering of Latin American and European medium sized cities” (from 2002 to 2004) on which MOVILIZATION is based, can be summarized twofold: the city studies executed in the previous project have proven that in many cities cycling can substantially contribute to develop a sustainable transport system. In the view of the cities’ representatives cycling is not the solution but part of the solution. Also urban planners and architects expressed their needs to obtain more tools and knowledge for implementing campaign materials and measures as to improve cycling in their cities. Financing of infrastructure was seen less important than educational programs to improve safety for cyclists. It was recognized by project members that cycling has a huge potential in most of the cities but also they had to admit that constraints as lack of traffic safety are hindering the promotion of this mode of transport. By means of developing a toolkit for cities, which contains campaign materials, implementation of (simple and cheap) traffic measures, and the development and implementation of materials for traffic education, the project MOVILIZATION aims to improve cycling conditions and therefore the cycling climate in the participating cities. The project is primarily useful for cities where cycling as integrated part of everyday mobility is already a common issue. However, cities, which are in the phase of starting the promotion of cycling, can also benefit from the project results (for more info see www.movilization.nl)
Project Design
In April 2005 the MOVILIZATION project started with 8 participating cities of which 2 are from Europe (Stuttgart/D, Utrecht/NL) and 6 from Latin America (Gobernacion Atlantico/Colombia, Florianópolis/Brazil, Léon/Nicaragua, Loja/Ecuador, Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, Valledupar/Colombia). Participation of the cities depended on their willingness to develop a local program on improvement on cycling conditions. Two external members, IBC, from the Netherlands and FOVUS/University Stuttgart in subcontract with ISOE, Frankfurt, Germany are providing external input and supervision during the process.
In the first phase of the project every city elaborated proposals, which were discussed in a general meeting. After a short period of adjustments the best proposals were selected and the project coordinator liberated financial means. The cities are now in the process of implementing their own proposals and during this process a monitoring and evaluation program is measuring the effects of the implementation of the several promotion campaigns.
The methodology of using a toolkit of measures makes it possible for each city to choose the most adequate set of strategies and tools according to the local situation including the political, economical, cultural and institutional context.
As part of the project communication, building up a network and for needs of the evaluation of the conducted activities were hold in total three weekly seminars. The first one took place in Utrecht in September 2005 as inauguration and to select the project proposals. The second one was in June 2006 in Léon, Nicaragua to evaluate the work in progress of the to be conducted activities in each city. The last one was in February 2007 in Baranquilla/Columbia for the evaluation of the completed campaigns. In addition it was made possible for Latin American member cities to present their work on the VeloCity Congress in June 2007 in Munich.
URB-AL-Program – Networks of Knowledge Transfer
The URB-AL program (Urbes America Latina-Europa) of the EuropeAid Cooperation Office is a horizontal program of decentralized co-operation of the European Commission that brings together cities, agglomerations and regions in the European Union and Latin America. It deals in particular with increasing the transfers of knowledge, experiences and know how. The project MOVILIZATION is part of the Network "Control of Urban Mobility".
Financial contributions to execute the project were obtained for a mayor part from the European Commission (70%) as the other part was contributed by the project cities (30%) themselves.