Bike couriers deliver faster than delivery vans - and sometimes they outperform motorised two-wheelers, too. Forbes journalist Carlton Reid draws this conclusion based on figures from the food delivery company Deliveroo.
The Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) of Bologna has received final approval from the mayor Virginio Merola and is the first one to have been conceived at the metropolitan city level in Italy.
The SUMP aims to reverse the current modal split, where motorised transport dominates: by 2030, 60 % of total journeys in the metropolitan area will be carried out by foot, bike or public transport, reducing the greenhouse gases produced by motorised traffic by at least 40 %.
The Sustainable Mobility for All (SuM4All) initiative presents A Review of International Agreements, Conventions and Other Instruments to Achieve Sustainable Mobility, a report which takes stock of existing international instruments—whether legally binding or non-binding and involving one or multiple modes of transport—and maps them against global goals.
The first set of a new series of fact sheets chronicling the innovative mobility initiatives being conducted within the CIVITAS ECCENTRIC project are now available.
These focus on Munich (Germany), Ruse (Bulgaria) and Madrid (Spain), three of the project's five Living Lab cities, and provide key details relating to each of the solutions, including;
The world’s biggest trial of commercial electric vehicles (EVs) has been given the green light by UK energy regulator Ofgem, bringing together leading power, technology, fleet and transport companies to test and implement the best approaches for the EV rollout for commercial enterprises.
Luxembourg is planning to make all modes of public transport free to use. Xavier Bettel, leader of the country’s recently re-elected government, has pledged to remove fares on buses, trains and trams from the beginning of the summer of 2019. This follows Estonia's decision to make it possible for its counties to make public transport free to use.
The Belgian federal government is taking action to provide alternatives for those employees that currently use company cars. Two initiatives, the Mobility Budget and the Mobility Allowance, have been designed to offer employees alternatives to the company car, including by supporting the use of other modes of transport or cleaner cars.
The City of Prague is struggling with the high number of incoming commuter cars and a subsequent shortage of parking spaces. The capital’s new governing coalition has sought the help of the neighbouring region of Central Bohemia to address the issue.
CIVITAS SUMPs-Up has opened a call for cities to take part in its next SUMP Learning Programme (SLP). This will focus on SUMP implementation, financing and procurement. The application deadline is 12.00 CET on 11 January 2019.
Paris Mayor Anna Hidalgo has called for the city’s historic centre to be closed for traffic every Sunday from the end of 2019. Starting in autumn 2018, much of the city centre already becomes exclusively pedestrianised for one Sunday of every month. The plans presented by the Mayor detail wide-ranging measures in four of Paris’ inner-city districts to cut of car traffic. Well known and instantly recognisable tourist attractions such as the Louvre or the cathedral of Notre Dame are within the area included in the plans.
Shared e-bikes, implemented at scale, could double the number of bicycle trips in London, increasing their modal share and reducing congestion and pollution. A recent report by Steer suggests that 813 000 daily trips in Greater London could switch to shared e-bikes. This would lead to 21 000 fewer hours spent in traffic and 184 fewer metric tons of CO2 emissions every day.
‘Switchable trips’
Having experienced the challenges with the roll out of free-floating bike sharing services, Vienna is now having to deal with a new mobility sharing service: e-scooter sharing services, including free-floating services that do not make use of any fixed infrastructure. As with shared bicycles, shared e-scooters use the streets and cycle networks of Vienna and are parked on pavements.
Safer City Streets, the worldwide traffic safety network for liveable cities recently published its first global benchmark of urban road safety. The data, collected from 31 cities in 20 countries reveals striking differences in road safety performance between cities.
As part of the London Mayor’s intention to decrease concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at roadside locations in the UK capital, seven ‘Low Emission Bus Zones’ (LEBZs) are now in full operation in the city. Eventually, the plan is to have 12 LEBZs across London, with the Mayor announcing five new LEBZs on a visit to New Cross in South London.
The management of the evolution of mobility requires the use of increasingly sophisticated equipment and to meet the growing needs of urban planners and transport providers, the Volkswagen group is testing works on quantum computers to help reduce congestion and optimise traffic flow.
Vienna’s pilot project on banning cars at the start of the school day (see related ELTIS News) has ended and has turned out to be a success. In the course of the pilot, Vienna closed the access road to the “Vereinsgasse” primary school in the Leopoldstadt district of the city to cars and other motorised vehicles at the start of the school day, i.e. between 7.45 and 8.15.
Urban passenger transport should become autonomous, shared and electric in order to bring down carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, says the International Transport Forum (ITF). But above all, multiple policy sectors need to be involved. The OECD-affiliated think tank asked 36 experts about their views on the decarbonisation of urban passenger transport. Their key points are listed in the report Policy priorities for decarbonising urban passenger transport.
A Silicon Valley-based company, who supply charging hardware and software and run one of the world’s largest electric vehicle charging station grids, plan to divide a considerable expansion scope equally between United States (its home market) and Europe, according to the firm’s chief executive.
The red, double-decker London bus is a well-known feature of the United Kingdom's capital city. It is estimated that around 6.5 million passengers are transported every day on London buses, and they are a vital service for the old, young, disabled and lower-income London residents.
A new Bus Safety Standard, which details bus safety requirements that all bus operators will need to endorse up to 2024, has been published by TfL (London Transport Authority) and comes as part of an approach to reach zero deaths on or by a bus in London by 2030.
