SmartMOVE Project Committee Meeting – engagement of all involved partners indicates a success story in addressing the management of employee mobility
The 2nd meeting of the project committee of the project SmartMOVE: Smart solutions for sustainable mobility took place in the Ljubljana Technology Park on December 15th, 2022. The partners were initially addressed by mag. Lilijana Madjar, the director of the Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region (RRA LUR), thanking them for their exceptional commitment to the project activities. The fruitful interdisciplinary cooperation of all partners and the cooperative attitude of the organizations that joined the SmartMOVE project indicate the possibility of great progress in addressing mobility management in high-traffic areas through the promotion of sustainable employee mobility.
The head of project at RRA LUR as the leading partner, Klemen Gostič, expressed great satisfaction with the accomplishments and the proactive attitude of the partners, keeping the project on an excellent path to achieving all of its goals. One after another, the partner’s presentations of their activities proved this to be true. The meeting was also joined via video call by representatives of the Nordlansforsking Research Institute.
IPoP – The Institute for Spatial Policies had completed a large-scale survey among employees of the UKC and BTC areas and of the companies IKEA Slovenija d.o.o. and Studio Moderna d.o.o.. Among these, they found that the least number of employees migrate to the workplace as drivers with their own vehicle to the area of UKC, namely 49%. This share is the largest among employees in the BTC area, where it amounts to 64%. The analysis of travel habits also included workshops with focus groups and in-depth interviews with management. They explained that the area of the Ljubljansko barje landscape park KPLB didn’t call for a survey, since the employees clearly and competently defined the challenges of this area. Ljubljana Urban Planning Institute (LUZ) also participated in the qualitative part of the research since it will take the lead aftter the analisys and prepare mobility plans, tailored to organizations with the goal of reducing the percentage of single-person transportation by car to the workplace by at least 5%.
The working group of the Jožef Stefan Institute, in close cooperation with the Norwegian partner (Nordlansforsking Institute), made progress in the development of the criterion system of the Certificate for Sustainable Mobility SmartMOVE, building mainly on motivation of employers. It was designed in such a way that companies will be able to periodically check the state of mobility of employees in the company and pursue goals for reducing the carbon footprint from the migration of employees to work.
With the help of a Norwegian partner, the Association of Employers of Slovenia (ZDS) started the preparation of specialized trainings for companies or organizations involved in the project, which will be carried out in the spring of 2023. The aim of interactive trainings is to enable the participants to recognize the negative effects that are a result of the choice of transport to work and to make employers aware of all options available. Later on they will send an open invitation to all companies that would show interest to join the online training on sustainable mobility of employees. IPoP will prepare educational videos with the presentation of good practices to visually enrich these trainings and provide quality content for a broad audience.
Later on, CER Partnership presented a very interesting and varied overview of legislation and good practices, especially in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, i.e. in countries that have many subventions for sustainable mobility. The selection of good practices will be updated frequently and will serve to prepare guidelines for policy makers (also) at the national level.
GoOpti d.o.o. presented the online platform for booking transportation to work www.goopti.com/gremoskupaj, which it developed for the purpose of implementing a pilot project of three-month free transportation to work with organized group transportation (February-April 2023) and the dinamic routes on which passengers will be transported. With the engagement of RRA LUR, the news about free transport in the period of February, March and April 2023 was successfully spread by both national and municipal media in the newsletters of the target municipalities, and in cooperation with the communication services of the participating organizations, it was also spread among employees. They have already collected over 300 applications, which are being collected until January 20, 2023 at www.goopti.com/gremoskupaj/prijava/.
As the next major event for the media and the interested public, a round table on the topic of alternative forms of mobility to work will be taking place in January 31st, 2023 in the Crystal Palace in BTC. A wide range of experts from the field of efficient mobility, including policy makers at national level will be invited to the debate. The project will also have launched an official website till the end of 2022.