About

Project Background

MED cities although facing the common challenge of developing a sustainable mobility background, they also present particularities depending on the territorial context and the type of tourists they attract. For these reasons, a sound transnational approach, is the key to guarantee MOTIVATE’s success. Unlike the traditional data collection methods, where citizens or visitors are “passive” data sources, the innovative approach of MOTIVATE lies in their active involvement in transport data collection/management, problems identification and proposed measures evaluation. MOTIVATE promotes a new model of SUMP development. The new model is based on the exploitation of social media and crowd-sourcing apps. The common model of implementing and applying these techniques that will be created and updated after the pilot testing cases, as well as, the transferring protocol that will be created and will include, processes, techniques and tools to ensure the efficient and consistent way of transferring the projects' results to other cities, will support the SUMP development and enhancement in all the Med area. MOTIVATE intends to help decision makers to gain a strong understanding of the main mobility problems that residents and tourists face and the most accepted and sustainable interventions, using cost effective ways of data collection and analysis and this will make the development, update and monitoring of SUMP much more targeted and efficient.

Project Objective

Although SUMP’s development has been very much examined the last years through a series of projects, the adoption rate in European and especially MED cities remains notable low, fact that can partly be attributed to local authorities hesitation to undertake innovative concepts as regards to a such a complex environment as urban areas and to such a complex issue as mobility. In a professed recession wave hitting Europe the last decade, urban mobility, an essential part of city’s daily operation, must find ways to stay afloat and become sustainable. As it seems, the key to unlock this potential is the use of crowdsourcing and social media in involving travellers in the decision making process, adding thus to the decisions the incomparable advantage of being widely accepted. In this way, the most acceptable sustainable urban transport policies, (from the existing pool of already well examined and proposed by the international practice) based on real users’ needs, will form the basis for accelerating SUMP development. MOTIVATE projects goes a step further by focusing on the needs of urban areas with high seasonality profiles (seasonal variations in transport demand) trying to align not only residents but also visitors needs with policy goals on sustainable mobility since many cities in Med area faces this common challenge which should be treated separately from other cities with flat demand.