“Awareness Raising Activities for sustainable mobility”
The activities related to shared urban mobility solutions through the co-creation activities of Social
Policy Lab (SoPoLab) of URBANITE project in Messina have arrived at the last stage. On March 16, 2023, the fourth (and last) SoPoLab (Social Policy Lab) event was held in the Sala Giunta of the Municipality of Messina, organized by Messina’s URBANITE partners: the Municipality of Messina and Alma Digit srl.
The event was attended by several local bodies and institutions, holders of different interests and perspectives, but with the shared aim of making urban mobility more efficient and safer and improving the quality of life of Messina's citizens.
The event started with an introduction on today's urban context of Messina in order to summarize the problems related to sustainable urban mobility in Messina, which were identified during the previous SoPoLabs and other activities carried out by the Municipality, but also to highlight the changes taking place in the city to overcome such problems.
Then, the URBANITE project was briefly presented, with the related objectives and previous activities of the SoPoLabs event in Messina.
The contributions to the discussion at the 4th SoPoLab Messina event, allowed to identify the key points to take care of for tackling the problem, such as:
- the importance of digital technologies in the transformation process of urban mobility. They have the added value of optimizing the information flows between the citizen and the traffic management systems, offering better mobility experiences on the one hand, and optimizing the decision-making process on the other hand;
- the importance of involving schools in order to, on the one hand, identify significant mobility problems in the school areas, which represent traffic congestion points at specific time slots, and, on the other hand, initiate sustainable and digital mobility awareness in young people, who represent the cultural reference of the near future;
- the priority of promoting the "culture" of the public transport system (ATM buses and tram lines) with respect to other opportunities oriented to sustainable mobility (cycle paths, interchange parking areas, pedestrian areas,…);
- supporting the cultural transformation with an improvement of the public transport service by also investing in the development of digital systems, in order to attract the attention of citizens and encourage the use of public transport systems.
To this end, it is also necessary to revise the transport plans for peripheral areas and villages that are still underserved, also imagining an integration into the mobility system of bike and/or scooter sharing services (which the Municipality is already starting up).
The 4° SoPoLab has allowed to discuss about objectives and priorities in the context of the diffusion of the public transport service in Messina, often highlighting the opportunities for additional services in support (such as interchange car parks and pedestrian areas).
The overall outcome of the 4° SoPoLab was very positive thanks to the availability, great collaboration and proactivity of all the parties involved, which made the event constructive and productive. Thanks to the SoPoLab activities of the URBANITE project, the Messina partners were able to analyse, discuss and search for solutions to improve urban mobility in Messina, focusing on specific aspects by exploiting the innovative technologies that URBANITE has made available.