TOOLBOX FOR OVERALL DESIGN OF LOW-CARBON VALUE-ADDED SERVICES
Summary description of the key features of the tool
The Value Added-services toolbox is a transferable support tool aimed at designing and assess low-carbon Value-Added services for passenger and freight in EU functional urban areas.
Value-Added services are organizational measures enabling to boost and promote low-carbon mobility services as an effective and alternative solution to conventional fossil-fuelled transport modes reducing, at the same time, the disadvantages produced by traffic restriction policies to people living, working or visiting Functional Urban Areas.
Furthermore, they can increase business opportunities of mobility services suppliers (including sustainable passenger and freight mobility services such as carpooling integrated with public transport, green last-mile delivery, etc.). The toolbox provides an overall description of most promising and innovative solutions implemented in European cities, enabling competent Public Authorities and professionals to assess and evaluate the technical, organisational and financial applicability of these innovative services in their own territories, taking into consideration the specific local conditions.
The Value-Added services considered in the toolbox are based on relevant technical knowledge and experience resulting from previous and ongoing European research and development projects, CIVITAS, Intelligent Energy Europe, Horizon 2020, etc.) dealing with innovative and low-carbon mobility services and ICT-based solutions. The covered Value-Added services are:
- carpooling integrated with public transport (innovative apps);
- innovative services in passenger transport interchanges;
- Mobility as a Service (MaaS) schemes;
- Multi-users lanes (priority bus lanes sharing with freight vehicles);
- Green last-mile logistics services (Business to business – Ver si on 2 B2B - and Business to Consumer -B2C- last-mile).
Expected impact and benefits of the tool for the concerned territories and target groups
City centers are responsible for a relevant part of traffic from and to other urban areas in their hinterlands. Access restriction policies (such as Low Emission Zones – LEZ - or Limited Traffic Zones – LTZ and pedestrian areas) can be used to tackle this phenomena which is spreading year by year causing an increasing transport demand. However, this interventions can have a negative impact on the relevant target groups involved (I.e commuters, tourists, students, shop owners, etc) that can jeopardise their good effect.
The developed Toolbox enables Public Authorities, transport providers as well as business operators to designand set-up tailored services and measures that can counterbalance the negative effects of traffic restriction regulations for city users. In the medium term, the toolbox and the implementation of proposed Value-Added services will thus contribute to increase attractiveness and accessibility of urban areas, favouring the shift towards low-carbon mobility and transport habits, without limiting individual mobility capability.
Sustainability of the tool and its transferability to other territories and stakeholders
The SOLEZ toolbox has been elaborated combining top-down and bottom-up approaches in order to rovide an effective and transferable technical supporting tool for relevant stakeholders including both public and private sector) to design and implement low-carbon mobility service in Functional Urban Areas.
The Toolbox focuses on solutions that are still innovative, but already pilot tested in at least one case in Europe, to ensure real applicability and limited set-up times for interested cities. For each proposed Value-Added service, specific examples, links and supporting material are provided.
Despite of different local conditions and mobility patterns, the developed toolbox is
a practitioner-oriented instruments characterized by a high level of applicability and transferability of the proposed low-carbon mobility solutions in quite different cities across Europe, being the result of broad transnational cooperation and projects.
Moreover, detailed step-by-sep indications for verifying readiness level of the concerned
urban area and supporting customization of the proposed service are provided. This way,
the toolbox can be used by a large number of cities, independently from their dimension or
level of expertise: each one will have the possibility to use that part of toolbox that better fits its
needs and goals.
The Value-Addes Services toolbox developed during the project are described in the following deliverables available in the publication section:
