Mid-Term Press release

SMACKER (Soft Measures & Actions for behavioural Change and Knowledge to Embrace peripheral and Rural areas) aims at promoting Demand Responsive public Transport (DRT) and mobility services in low population density areas, connecting the local and regional mobility systems to the main EU corridors and transport nodes, and nudging people to use public transport services instead of private cars.

This three-year project is endowed with a 2.1 million Euro budget and is led by SRM Reti e Mobilità, the Public Transport Authority of the Municipality and Metropolitan area of Bologna. It involves nine partners from six European countries.

SMACKER is now halfway to its course and is implementing its integrated approach combining soft measures (e.g. behaviour change campaigns) and hard measures (e.g. mobility service pilots) towards achieving its targets by deploying the full power of its founding pillars: Understanding, Participation, Actions, Innovation.

The first SMACKER Scientific Event, originally foreseen in Maribor (SI), took place on 10 November as a webinar, due to the COVID19 pandemic and the consequent meeting & travel restrictions. It involved more than 80 individuals coming from a number of European countries, Australia and the Caribbeans. It gave project partners, speakers and participants the opportunity to discuss the DRT topics for rural and peri-urban areas and learn from significant experiences developed in EU and outside. Also, participants were informed about the pilot implementation activities running in the six involved Central Europe regions, while stakeholders within and outside such regions learnt through dedicated sessions and also from the experience of the experts that are members of the “SMACKER Quality Partnership for a seamless Mobility governance (SQPM)”.

The six pilot actions are deploying their activities in strict cooperation with the respective Local Mobility Forums (LMF) involving institutions, non-experts and practitioners in the respective areas: the Apennine region in Italy, the city of Gdynia in Poland, the municipality of Praha-Suchdol in the Czech Republic, the rural area of the Pomurska region in Slovenia, the city of Budapest in Hungary and the mountain area of East-Tyrol region in Austria.

Project actions are allowing to implement a co-designing process for transport services involving local/regional communities and stakeholders, with the final aim of promoting the use of new transport services also through motivating and incentivizing campaigns. The direct beneficiaries of the actions are residents, commuters and tourists.

Full information and updates at: www.interreg-central.eu/smacker

 Contacts

SRM Reti e Mobilità

Giuseppe LIGUORI - Project Coordinator| giuseppe.liguori@srmbologna.it

Marco AMADORI – Communication Manager| marco.amadori@srmbologna.it