Showcasing UIA SASMob Innovation
The Smart Alliance for Sustainable Mobility (SASMob) project and its innovative idea, the ‘Employers’ Mobility Pledge’ showcased to different stakeholder groups in Hungary and beyond.
Not only was the internal meeting of the SASMob partnership to kick-off project activities a big success with an official signature ceremony of the Partnership Agreement by the high-level representatives of the diverse Partner Organisations, but the SASMob project, aiming to achieve a sustainable mobility system through the smart alliance, has also been showcased at international forums inviting actors highly interested in the topic of innovation in urban mobility.
As part of Bulgaria’s EU presidency, the 21st European Forum on Eco-innovation was held in Sofia between the 5-6 February. The Forum aimed at mobilising businesses, the public sector and non-governmental organisations to develop and deploy new innovative and eco-friendly solutions.
One of the SASMob Project Partners, the Regional Environmental Center (REC), was invited to the Forum to talk about how they are ‘putting organisational travel planning into practice - Sustainable commuting and its upscaling to municipal level’. REC’s mobility expert, Csaba Mezei presented how REC had been developing and piloting an on-site tool to monitor and help to reduce CO2 and other pollutant emissions and improve the energy efficiency of its employees’ commuting. The collected data (including fuel costs, savings and calories burned) was fed into a daily ride-sharing platform and into a website offering also information on public transport services, bike-to-work options and mobility planning. The SASMob project will build on REC’s expertise in developing sustainable commuting toolkits, and it is foreseen that this, and other similar smart mobility management tools will be applied on a city level scale amongst the first SASMob Pledge employers in Szeged.
Moreover, at the meeting of the EU Initiative CIVITAS Political Advisory Committee (PAC), on the 7-8 March in Szeged, the SASMob project was presented by the Deputy Mayor of Szeged, Sándor Nagy and the Mobility Manager of Project Partner 4, Regional Environmental Center (REC), Jerome Simpson. The CIVITAS PAC is a small group of leading politicians that acts as the steering group of the CIVITAS initiative, representing the interest of over 300 European cities dedicated to further the idea of sustainable urban mobility. In the focus of their discussion was the unique features of the cross-sector cooperation to co-design and tailor sustainable commuting solutions for employees, the so called ‘Employers’ Mobility Pledge’. The commitment of the private sector is supported by a responsive governance and transport system based on complex urban mobility behaviour data, forming the so called ‘SASMob Response’ pillar of the project.
In the framework of SASMob, we would like to bring the philosophy of smart, sustainable commuting forward to accelerate progress towards environmentally friendly urban mobility.
Urban mobility
