SASMob Journal 5: Quality time and anguish: slowing down during the pandemic

Mobility management at company level has matured over the last 2,5 years of project implementation. As the project manager from SZKHT project partner has put it: SASMOb was needed to create a momentum, the framework, to develop fora for joint thinking and joint actions.

The measures we introduced at company level towards sustainable mobility are very popular within our company, such as the bike-breakfasts, the company recreational bike-tour or the additional paid holiday for frequent bikers. This year we rewarded 99 of our employees with an extra paid holiday, because they used the bike for commuting for more than 50% of all working days. This is a great achievement and we are determined to keep these motivational actions alive even after the end of the project lifetime. I feel that it required more energy to initiate these actions than to maintain and run them. For example to establish the legal and organisational background for the paid extra day off, to define the director’s instructions, that required attention and time. To maintain this opportunity, our lock system automatically monitors our employees cycling habits, so it is easy to run this sustainability option open for the employees. Or equally for the rentable bicycle fleet we only need a yearly check-up on the bikes to run the service. (Viktor Ganyecz, SZKHT)

SZKHT was one of the most active and most innovative players for mobility management at company level. They were one of the main drivers for behaviour change in the city. It also shows that the success of the project largely depends on how the employees and mobility managers experienced the project. At SZKHT the project was a clear success, with a very high level of involvement. Nearly a hundred employees were cycling for more than 50% of the total working days - is a clear sign of success.

Strong commitment from employers is essential to the successful realization of hard and soft mobility measures. It is easier to achieve if if the company/ employer branding is in line with the project goals, such as with IT companies or with the city utility company (SZKHT). Companies with strong employer branding can be very successful in promoting more sustainable mobility modes in everyday commuting.

The time arrived to organise and plan the mechanisms to maintain and to sustain the results and achievements at city-level. With a well-functioning framework the future running of the system might not require that much of resources.

Szeged is the first Hungarian city which deals with workplace mobility at city level and thus it is a pioneering city with pioneering experiences. (Szabó Noémi Mobilissimus) 

The main innovation in the SASMob project was the creation of a cross-sectoral (public and private) partnership, which has been very successful and very beneficial for the City. At the same time, the coordination and the unification of the common work processes took a lot of effort . However, these efforts invested efforts pave the way to sustainability of the created structures. It is jointly believe by partners that the strongest element of the project is the company network established.

SASMob can build on the strong network of companies working side by side on mobility management. This is the strongest element of the SASMob network. To be a mobility manager at company level became an accepted position, officially recognised task within HR management.

Commitment towards sustainable mobility has been transformed into action with "painful consequences" for car drivers. Strong commitment from the employers is essential to the successful realization of hard and soft mobility measures. The commitment of MUA has been transformed to action. Municipality of Szeged have shown a good example to all employers in Szeged and eliminated 400 free parking lots reserved for municipal employees around the municipality building, schools and other public offices in the inner city. This is both a symbolic act and a practical one to curb car traffic in the inner city of Szeged.

Szeged long term sustainable development policy making was supported by both virtual and real-time events. The Szeged visioning tool helped citizens to imagine a different, more sustainable future Szeged in 2050, through a virtual reality map which gave glimpse into the future of Szeged. The tool gives an insight into the future of urban live in Szeged, in four themes: climate protection, mobility, technology and urban design. It provides a visual testimony on issues such as robotics supporting elderly people, the future of plastic and urban workshops besides commercial shops in 5 different locations in the city. Although the tool became more educational than participative, as it has been imagined, it is still a great opportunity to raise awareness on different sustainability options people have in the city of Szeged.

On the side of real-time events citizens of Szeged has occupied the urban spaces on the banks of the river Tisza. Reclaiming the rivers and riverbanks from the car traffic during summer months is a living trend in Europe and this summer Szeged also joined the group of cities organising its festival and green city events on the riverbank. The riverbank of Tisza has been transformed to an urban promenade which has been filled with activities, programmes, concerts, late night cinema performances and other events to promote sustainable living.

And unfortunately, here we have also to talk about the areas of shortcomings within SASMob project implementation. Because there are indeed some shortcomings and arrears within project implementation. No matter how hard Szeged has designed control mechanisms and monitoring processes, developing an App from scratch overstretched the project time-frame and is causing further delays and shortcomings in project delivery. From hindsight it is clear that the project could have bought and fine-tuned existing Apps from the market for measuring sustainable commuting efforts. The present version of the Greenformers to work app will have limited usability - it will serve only within workplaces, but not for the whole city - while the reward system has not been developed yet.

It is clear that regardless the time spent on software development, the use of the App will not be easy, and commuting tracking will not be automatic. The software development process has had some strong consequences on project impetus: it slowed down internal actions within the companies and also negatively affected the spirit within the partnership.

During the autumn of 2020 the beta testing of the Greenformers to work app has started and a couple of SASMob project managers had spent great deal of time testing the App, however it is only expected for March-April 2021 that the App can be introduced at company level at all. This is exactly the last moment to produce tangible results and produce enough data for monitoring purposes within SASMob project lifetime.
 

Another quite typical shortcoming in mobility management regards the utilisation of generated data. The sensors on the Szeged bridge and on the public transport vehicles collect and aggregate data on traffic flows in a more and more accurate manner. The project produces up-to-date information from the sensors on current traffic processes, and the lockdown measures created a great opportunity to verify and fine-tune the sensors and this should serve as the basis for smart city management. However, the utilisation of these data has not been conceptualised. It is necessary to understand, interpret and utilise the generated information wisely. So far SASMob has not created processes for data utilisation other than verification of current trends. A great opportunity is to correlate accident occurrences with weather, light and traffic management conditions and see how these factors influence the number of accidents.

The most relevant progress within the last 6 months can be grasped at dissemination and knowledge transfer level. Knowledge transfer became one of the strongest elements of the project implementation in this period, which is not a surprise, turning towards the end of the project lifecycle.

SASMob has supported UIA on understanding monitoring and evaluation efforts within the project and discussed project level activities with the Ecorys research team. With CSES consultant and associate Dorottya Sallai project team members discussed project implementation and supported DG Regio on the planning of 2021-2027 period European Urban Initiative programming.

CIVITAS The coronavirus has changed our personal life strategies and modes of operation: the way we have fun, the way we pay attention to the joys of everyday life as well as the way we work and travel. This is also the case with further trainings, exchanges of views and professional forums. If you miss conferences and face-to-face meetings, you need to find another way to learn about best practices and urban initiatives. The Civitas Association, a network of European cities thinking together for cleaner and more sustainable transport, has presented the best, most lovable European initiatives of 2020 in an online publication, in city videos, instead of study visits.

In the videos, city leaders and professionals testify about their goals and achievements. We can gain insight into the everyday traffic situation of cities, changes and developments beyond the constraints of different cultures and customs. Among the 7 European cities, Szeged also presents itself with the summer Tisza bank events and the SASMob project, which promotes sustainable work. The use of our public spaces is always a matter of conflict: apparently where cars and pedestrians engage for dominance. The Szeged project and related small-scale initiatives have shown that the needs of the people are not set in stone, they can and should be shaped with clever words, try-out uses and examples.

Here you can find the e-publication on Szeged

The knowledge provider partner in SASMob partnership, Mobilissimus became the main driver of transferability outputs, presented SASMob results on many conferences and in expert journals. Mobilissimus has been presenting SASMob in many conferences, such as ECOMM 2020 conference. Workplace mobility practices taken from SASMob were presented at the International Transport Science online conference, and walkability elements of the project were presented at Magyar CIVINET online meeting.

At the end of the implementation period, with so many insecurities, with broken timelines and cancelled events it is difficult to maintain the spirit of the partnership. When companies are struggling to maintain their work force and to smoothly run their businesses, sustainable commuting was put behind within the agenda for some. Indeed safe commuting became the most important issue for many companies.

Financial and managerial insecurity had a strong impact on project implementation. Some partners are more occupied with maintaining and providing the core services - such as running public transportation in the city or just occupied with more fundamental tasks. Also project meetings are also not so vivid, the good working relationship among partners have also faded in lack of joint actions.

SASMob project was deeply hit by the pandemic, since it changed the world of commuting completely, changed the needs for travel and the attitudes toward the different transport modes. SASMob had to go back to the goals and objectives originally formulated and reshape the remaining implementation tasks.

The long delays with the preparation of the IT Job application is a frustrating factor within project implementation. One which contributes to some of the partners being less eager and less willing to work jointly within the partnership. Unfortunately no leadership can find remedy to speed up the IT development process and this is a frustrating situation for the whole partnership.

A clear example of leadership and setting a good example has been proposed and implemented by Szeged municipality. The city administration maintained free parking lots for their own employees and guests around their premises. This privilege has been abolished. For more than 400 parking lots in the city centre the MUA abolished payment exemption, which is a clear sign of commitment and setting an example.

Public procurement issues become more foreseeable and better scheduled as approaching the end of the project implementation. However public approval processes can be lengthy for structural changes in urban space, such as designing and approving a new playground or designing a new bus/tram stop. For such infrastructural investments the approval process with many authorities and departments involved can be lengthy. Project based investments are difficult to include in the "normal", business as usual workflow of the municipality and thus those streamlined investments usually enjoy priority over project-based investments. This is a difficult task to overcome and requires high negotiation skills from project managers.

Smooth integrated cross-departmental working within the municipality is ensured by the personal ties among civil servants and many informal networks. However this is more difficult in the time of the Pandemic with remote working to maintain. This aspect of office life is one of the worst affected areas by the Covid- 19 virus pandemic. Partners organised online social gatherings to maintain horizontal collegial ties. Bottlenecks in project delivery can be solved by upgrading the challenges to higher level decision making level, i.e. to the vice mayor, at which level sequence of tasks to be accomplished can be easily solved.

At the same time working relation among SASMob partners are well-established and well functioning. The internal, organisational logic of the participating companies are well established, people know each other and know to whom to turn to for advice or help. 

Implementing participatory processes involves a lengthy learning and education period. It requires a different state of mind from the usual authority mechanisms and processes. SASMob project is a great opportunity to shape internal municipal working mechanism and to involve more and more partners to co-design and co-develop measurements. SASMob is a very good learning process for the city to get acquainted with participatory processes and not only ask for opinion but also to share responsibilities, and divide tasks with both citizens and companies. Szeged municipality together with the public and private partners are learning participatory processes by developing participatory actions.

One such participatory element was the long-term visioning for the city. Szeged Municipality started a large-scale visioning campaign, co-designing the future of the city together with the inhabitants, with sustainable mobility being an integral part of this process. The webpage szegedvision.hu has been prepared. However in the making it became more educative than participative. It offers a sustainable alternative for the city in a visual format, however it is not a platform where people can discuss important issues in a structured way on the future of the city.

Networks and processes for participative, co-delivery actions with employer partners has been put in place. The SASMob partnership became a strong network in which partners are learning from each other, helping each other and delivering mobility actions and programmes together. This is how Viktor Ganyec, project manager of SZKHT has put it:

What we develop, invent or try out at the company level is always done as part of the SASMob cooperation and is available and freely utilized by SASMob partners. For example our parklet, which was thought by many to be very fashionable, creative and very well received, can be borrowed freely within the partnership. If another company is hosting an event, we will be happy to lend it to them, as well as our sustainability programs or our public cleaning cars can be used. This is also the advantage of SASMob, to think and act together. This makes it always easier to be visible and effective.

Monitoring of project delivery has been incorporated into the Application Form structure. Different monitoring tasks and deliverables have been included in every single work package; thus responsibility of monitoring activities is shared among work package leaders. At the end of project lifetime, all work package leaders are occupied with monitoring and evaluation activities and how best can be their part of the work be finalised and disseminated. 

Approaching the end of the project, it would also be good to see how SASMob delivers in terms of the proposed indicators. The output indicators are not well integrated into the work package structure and thus their monitoring, delivery and necessary assessment is not well integrated into the everyday working mechanisms of project implementation. However at the end of project implementation more and more attention is given to the indicators. Delivery of project results is also highly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore we had many meetings with the management team to discuss and updated the indicators and target values in order to capture project results.

What is financial sustainability for SASMob? The Smart Alliance will survive on the long run, if private companies will be interested to contribute to joint actions and to cooperate and coordinate their mobility and commuting actions. Clear communication and openness from the local municipality for co-decision will enhance this move. SASMob project design includes 2 streams for sustainability: mobility planning and mobility service point. The University of Szeged has been active in building up their own local knowledge for mobility planning and developed a university course. Since the University of Szeged is also responsible to search and involve new employers into mobility planning, they have a good feedback about the acceptance of the service they propose. The University is building up the business case for the mobility planning service of the University of Szeged.

The managerial tasks for the SASMob alliance will be entrusted to the Szeged Public Transport company, thus public transport services and other sustainable modes of transport can be coordinated. This managerial task will be co-financed by the city municipality itself, however it also requires future co-financing from private companies. The running of the Mobility Service Desk is being developed at the moment.

Communication with target beneficiaries is the crucial and one of the most difficult task among SASMob actions. The challenges of communication within SASMob remained in the last few months, aggravated with the fact that even the planed large scale city events had to be canceled. If target beneficiaries are considered as employees within the partner organizations, then communication is continuous, messages are clear, actions are intriguing. However some of the project actions and result indicators require target beneficiaries understood as the citizens of Szeged. For this target group SASMob is not visible, actions are sporadic and are not clearly distinguishable from other city festivals and programmes. The large scale communication, which was planned through the IT URBAN app (renamed as Greenformers to work App) has not been achieved.

This is largely due to the continuous delay of the Greenformers to Work App, which is still in the testing phase and which will have reduced number of functions.

One of the success stories within communication activities was the large scale drawing competition jointly  organised by Szeged Transport Company, Polus Szeged and the Municipality of Szeged among children and youngsters. It was a great success with entries from kindergarten to college age. The aim is that these drawings will decorate public transport vehicles in the city.

The communication manager of SASMob has been replaced, which creates an immediate knowledge gap in management, however we hope in quick adaptation to tasks and processes.

SASMob is regarded as an important city-wide network which aims quality of life and sustainability of the city. A network which is worth taking part at, and thus companies are eager to join the network, which is a good sign in terms of upscaling and sustainability. Réka Erdélyi, SASMob project manager:

In our experience, most employers in the city are aware of the importance of employer-based mobility planning and have started implementing measures independently. The city is very happy to provide SASMob, as a framework for all these endeavours and give an official platform for networking and sharing experiences. We are sure that mobility planning will gain more and more attention in the future and we also believe that teleworking will become more wide-spread. All these measures and cooperation are put in place in order to create a more liveable city with less pollution and stress related to traffic and commuting.

SASMob has also created some high-visibility outputs in term of transferability. The unheld CIVITAS peer-to-peer workshop which had to be cancelled has been transformed into an e-publication which also included a great video on sustainable mobility actions in Szeged.

Mobilissimus became the main driver of transferability outputs, presented SASMob results on many conferences and in expert journals. This knowledge transfer supports the local and national upscaling of the project as well. This article, in Hungarian is summarising the effects of Covid-19 on public transport services, financing and public acceptance of safety on board. Within the document the efforts made by SASMob Szeged are put into European context.