Newsletter #2 Horizon 2020

Transcription

1 Newsletter #2 Horizon 2020

2 EMPOWER Newsletter #2 September 2016 Welcome to Newsletter #2 EMPOWER is a pioneering research project exploring the various ways in which we can encourage individuals to reduce their car dependence and enjoy alternative travel options by rewarding change using positive incentives, delivered through social media and digital technologies. Funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 programme, this project combines empirical research with practical implementation in four Living Lab Cities, seven Take-Up Cities and a strong global community of Follower Cities and organisations. In this second issue you will learn more about one of our Take-Up Cities, Odense, our Living Lab, Enschede, the importance of Social Innovation, and upcoming events. Business models play an integral role in EMPOWER. Technology has to be designed to be a part of a business providing value to stakeholders, and evolve the service to meet the requirements of users." - Anders Hjlalmarsson, Senior Researcher Sustainable Transports This project has received funding from the European Union s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no In This Issue Take-Up Cities: Odense Living Lab: Enschede In the spotlight: Benjamin Groenewolt Social Innovation: the EMPOWERed method Interview with Frances Hodgson Upcoming events Newsletter #2 Horizon2020

3 TAKE-UP CITIES: ODENSE EMPOWER has seven Take-Up Cities: Antwerp, Bologna, Budapest, Milan, Newcastle, Odense and Reading. Take-Up Cities will be trialling EMPOWER tools and techniques in their own city and transport context. Throughout our forthcoming newsletters, we will be taking a closer look at individual Take-Up Cities, their main aims, the methods they will be using, and the progress they have made so far. In this issue, we feature the city of Odense. ODENSE: The Key Facts Odense is the third largest city in Denmark, with a population of 200,000. Odense is one of the main educational centres in Denmark, home of the University of Southern Denmark and many other higher educational institutions. Odense is the island of Funen's most important industrial and commercial centre, and the city's central location makes it one of the national convention and congress centres in Denmark. Aims As an EMPOWER Take-Up City, Odense are building on their experience with promoting cycling. Odense plan to work with all their citizens and will be distributing campaign materials to all households. The city wants to encourage citizens to walk or cycle more often on short distances rather than taking the car, and will introduce positive incentive schemes focused on tracking trips, challenges, battles and gamification. These positive incentive schemes will include a cycling campaign based on the app Go Bike Denmark (Ta Cyklen Danmark), and a campaign Biking Friend focusing on encouraging school children to cycle more through a gamification cycling app. This app will also be used to help young students with social/mental health issues gain better mobility by being able to cycle to school. The City of Odense will also introduce a walking campaign, with regular events at local markets, bakeries and supermarkets. Odense hope to convert 36,000 daily short car trips to either walking or cycling trips, resulting in a decrease of 15% of car trips on distances under 5km. Methods Odense will use focus on advertising and publicity marketing to help spread awareness of their campaigns. This will include social media, the distribution of specially made flyers/postcards and other materials in public and to households, outdoor posters, featured articles in popular local magazines, supplying cafes with take away coffee cups featuring the campaign details and more. For Odense s positive incentive schemes, giveaway prizes include bike helmets, rain ponchos, candy boxes and rewards include bikes, gift cards to the cinema, the zoo, shops, restaurants and many more. Progress Odense is already busy implementing its various schemes. The promotion of the city s Bike Friend campaign began in August, and Go Bike and the Walking Challenge kicked off at the beginning of September! The EMPOWER website will be regularly updated with the progress of our Take-Up Cities. Ready to go! Promotional material ready to be distributed in Odense Newsletter #2 Horizon2020

4 Living Lab: Enschede Enschede: The Facts The EMPOWER concepts, new software and organisational business models will be tested in real life city situations with actual travellers within each of four Living Lab Cities. Working with local partners, these four experiments will be responsive to the travel situations in each context and will test the different incentives and services most relevant to each city. All incentives are designed to reduce the use of conventionally fuelled vehicles. One of EMPOWER s Living Labs is Enschede. Enschede s mobility management plan focuses on creating a modal shift from the private car to more sustainable modes of transport, with currently 3% public transport, 42% cyclists and 55% private motor vehicle use in the city. The city works on the implementation of sustainable urban transport measures in cooperation with the University of Twente, the regional government and several private partners in the fields of behavioural change, communication technology and marketing. The principle partner is Twente Mobiel who promote health and flexible working, whilst also reducing costs by influencing the travel behaviour of people. The core of current mobility measures is a bicycle plan and as part of the programme Beter Benutten 2, the city of Enschede will build some extra bicycle routes, finish the network of dedicated bus lanes and will develop several campaigns to promote cycling. Implementation of EMPOWER in Enschede will consider the following actions: use SMART to stimulate people to cycle, offering reward points for cycle trips and focusing on regular non-bicycle users. In addition to the existing SMART tool, personalised messages will congratulate people on the number of bicycle journeys they have made and the time savings they have achieved; use social media in combination with these personal messages and achievements so that users can challenge work colleagues and friends, organise a group and start a competition; Enschede is a city of 160,000 inhabitants located in the east of the Netherlands within the region of Twente. Formerly a centre of textile production, it is now part of the high tech knowledge region with a concentration of ground breaking companies specialising in systems and materials, with many excellent partnerships and spin-offs between education and research institutions and local companies. A modern, vibrant university city, Enschede focuses on mobility organise a buddy scheme for the elderly so they can find somebody to travel with on public transport. management measures for a shift towards the more sustainable modes of transport. Newsletter #2 Horizon2020

5 In the Spotlight: Benjamin Groenewolt Benjamin has worked with the Municipality of Enschede for several years, where he has been involved in various mobility projects (SMART, SUNSET) as well as the development of two hybrid buses. Benjamin is involved in a wide range of topics: reaching from a feasibility study on changing commuting behaviour of students to implementing a dynamic platform allocation system for a bus station. Within EMPOWER, Benjamin is managing the implementation of the positive incentives schemes within Enschede. Why does Enschede need to reduce the number of conventionally fuelled vehicles? Enschede has the ambition to increase the modal share in favour of the bicycle to increase liveability in the city and decrease air pollution. Also, there are a number of inbound corridors which suffer from high congestion rates in the morning peak hours. A reduction of the use of conventionally fuelled vehicles should ease this problem. What innovative solutions are you trying within the Enschede Living Lab? Using the SMART app, we will aim to deliver personalised challenges to participants. By relating the challenge to a person s own situation, the challenge becomes more appealing. We will use the innovative incentive engine to distribute challenges and rewards to the traveller. How will you encourage people to take part? The personalised approach should make the challenges as appealing as possible. Also, we will work with local shop owners to provide a rich assortment of rewards which people can earn when achieving the challenges. Which improvements to SMART are you developing in Enschede? The main effort in SMART is in the use of the incentive engine. The aim is to automate the personalisation of challenges as much as possible. Working with user groups, parameters based on past behaviour and a user profile, we should work towards a personalised approach without overspending on the management effort. How is gamification part of SMART? SMART has two main gamification elements. Completing a wide range of challenges is one of the main game elements of SMART. For all challenges, you can score points based on your performance. The other main gamification element is challenging your friends. For example, in group challenges you can see a group leader board of the friends who participate in the specific challenge. What do you hope traffic will look like in Enschede in 10 years time? In ten years time, we hope that the cycling will be the main means of transport in Enschede. As a result, peak hour congestion is reduced as less car trips will be made. Also, neighbourhood liveability will improve as car parking space can be substituted for bicycle parking or even allow for more green areas in the streets. For those cars still in use, electric driving and sharing communities should be the new norm. Newsletter #2 Horizon2020

6 Social Innovation: the EMPOWERed method Using recent empirical studies throughout the world, EMPOWER has identified the key factors leading to the success (or failure) of social innovation interventions in the transport sector. We found that the definition of social innovation based implementations in the transport sector is problematic and widened the search criteria to include sharing economy based schemes and sharing schemes. This enables car sharing, bike sharing, walking school buses, as well as less formal implementations to all be included in the review. The table overleaf providers an overview of social innovation in the transport sector. The factors that make a scheme successful cover both operational-type factors which look at efficiencies and organisational form and what users find attractive about the schemes. We found that the key determinants of success in sharing schemes in the transport sector are trust, convenience, reduction of effort and cost. Factors that indicate failure include liability and mistrust. New areas for research include: Exploration of groundswell type movements coupled with social media to self-organise transport schemes; the effectiveness of incentives with social innovation for transport schemes; mixing methods to exploit social media analysis in combination with GPS services and traditional transport surveys; and identifying the role of municipalities and other stakeholders in social innovation schemes. Newsletter #2 Horizon 2020

7 Social innovation in transport sector Determinants of success Obstacles Car sharing Anonymity Taxation confusion (the practice of sharing a car for regular travelling, especially for commuting) Focus on utilitarian rides Flexibility and personalisation of free floating schemes Management and administration to build trust Lack of policy implementations to support in the form of additional benefits such as parking concessions Insurance policies Convenience Cost saving Hassle saving Environmental impact reduction For journeys difficult to do by public transport including taxi Peer to peer (P2P) car sharing schemes Social organisational strategies to increase trust Convenience Trust issues Preference of big company to P2P (the process whereby existing car owners make their vehicles available for others to rent for short periods of time ) Monetary benefits Expand mobility options Sharing under-used resources Liability Transport policy support such as parking concessions Insurance policies Taxation confusion RideSharing Personal security e.g. reputation scores, vehicle tracking Trust issues Density of potential users BikeSharing Location (250m of workplace) Compulsory helmet wearing legislation Opportunity for theft and vandalism reduction Redistribution and rebalancing of bicycles Stakeholder engagement Convenience Monetary savings Health benefits Environmental impact reduction Walking School Buses Time savings Enjoyment and pleasure Time constraints Road traffic safety concerns Information and promotion Recruitment

8 Social Innovation Expert: Frances Hodgson Frances Hodgson is the leader of the Investigating Social Innovation work package, and the Co-Investigator of the EMPOWER project. In addition she is the co-lead with Prof. Susan Grant-Muller on the design of the Living Lab in the UK and the lead of the micro-experimental work in the Interventions and Behavioural responses work package. How does social innovation impact on the reduction of conventionally fuelled vehicles? There are a wide range of social innovation based schemes such as bike-sharing, car sharing, ride sharing, walking groups such as school walking buses. In recent years there has been a rapid growth in the number of schemes, see for example, and EMPOWER deliverable D2.2. Engagement with users is growing through app development and social networking. Evidence is growing and suggests that the new form of car-sharing schemes using free-floating cars result in less car use and much more multi-modal behaviour (Kopp et al, 2015) Evidence on bike sharing schemes in the USA for example, shows an increase in bike use and subsequent reduction in car use. (Shaheen et al 2014) How important is critical mass for schemes to be successful? The importance of size varies with scheme. For car sharing and ridesharing schemes the size of the social network and the critical mass is important to match users and service, car or ride that is being offered. The magnitude of the group of users can be significant in determining how well a scheme can meet the travel needs and spatial dispersion of the users. In bike sharing schemes it is the relationship between the numbers of users and spatial location of bikes that becomes critical. More recent developments are for app developers to offer open source resources for smaller communities to start their own bike-share scheme. Is there a role for local authorities in encouraging sustainable transport choice? Many cities are recognising that there is a growing innovation in the measures and implementations that they can encourage and support. Cities play a vital role in implementing creative and dynamic business models that as a result, bring together and engage with a diverse range of stakeholders, such as app developers, or community groups. In many implementations the cities are the glue, the factor that ensures successful collaborations. Cities also have a role in supporting with infrastructure planning and design, for example for shared bike schemes the evidence is that spatial location for the bike stations can be a significant determinant of success and cities play a key role in locating stations to make them attractive to use. (EMPOWER deliverable D6.1 Brochure 2016; Chan and Shaeen, 2012; Bachand-Marleau et al, 2012) In addition cities have a role in influencing the status and image given to the scheme and subsequent attractiveness to users. How are personal benefits determined by socio-economic status? The key findings of our review work on EMPOWER shows that there is variation among users in social innovation based schemes. We have found that age, gender and income levels are significant. Different schemes are attractive to different groups of people for example, bike sharing schemes seem to be more attractive to groups that have higher incomes, are younger and are more attractive for men more than women. Newsletter #2 Horizon 2020

9 UPCOMING EVENTS 1. ITS World Congress th 14th October Melbourne, Australia 2. IEEE 19th International Conference on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITSC 2016) 1st 4th November Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Newsletter #2 Horizon 2020

10 Newsletter #2 Horizon 2020