Developing Green Urban Mobility Policies for Sustainable Public Transportation in Local Communities – A Norwegian Perspective

Researcher Bokolo Anthony Jnr., from the Department of Applied Data Science, Institute for Energy Technology, Norway, published an article in Journal of Place Management and Development, in the year 2023, regarding green urban development. The article provides an up-to-date review on this issue. Here are some of the key issues.

The author points out that the concept of green urban mobility has emerged as one of the best approaches for promoting environmental-friendly transportation in local communities. Green urban mobility aims to reshape the public transportation system and enhance mobility, with emphasis on deploying digital technologies to promote sustainable public transportation.

The green urban mobility aims to decrease the level of air pollution, noise, and dust from traffic in cities. It has the potential to promote sustainable development of local economies by providing proactive steps to help decarbonize the public transportation systems thereby providing local communities with the prospect to meet their green policy responsibilities in a holistic manner.

Therefore, the research concludes that the development of green urban mobility strategies is, thus, not restricted to lowering transport-related adverse externalities, but aims to address the bigger goal of supporting economic, ecological, and human development.

However, adopting green urban practices in transport sector is a challenges task as it requires the use of data from digital technologies for changing the planning, design, and use of public space, use of transport infrastructure, integrating different mobility modes along with the change of citizens mindset towards adopting green mobility system establishing a data-driven integrated, and environmentally? friendly intermodal and multimodal mode of commuting is a key issue for the development of? urban regions.

Green Urban Mobility Measures to be Adopted in Local Communities

Green urban mobility measures imply shaping local communities’ transportation services in a way that guarantees equal opportunities for all social groups residing and working in each region and provides appropriate form of mobility related information and communication to users.

Green urban mobility measures in local communities should provide available, accessible, acceptable, affordable, and adaptable for inclusion to all groups in the society, while ensuring a safe and secure mobility for all individuals, with a prominence on pedestrians and cyclists as the most vulnerable public road users

The study indicates that the green urban mobility policies requires measures to lessen the need to travel (promoting citizens to take less trips), to promote modal shift, to decrease trip lengths, and to achieve more efficiency in the current public transportation system

Other urban mobility initiatives involve redistributive schemes like park and ride, fleet monitoring, docking stations, smartcard integration for public transit, and integrated ticketing schemes, touch screen electric hubs, and Global Positioning System (GPS) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) that provides positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services for regional and global transportation services.

Soft Mobility for Green Urban Mobility in Local Communities

The researcher specified that the increased attention to safeguarding the natural environmental concerns due to the increased emission from motorized transportation has motivated local communities towards the development of specific services and infrastructures devoted towards “promoting soft mobilities”.

Soft mobility, which includes all modes of Non-Motorized Transportation (NMT) or human powered mobility that utilize only human energy is suggested as one of the green urban mobility initiatives. Soft mobility comprises pedestrian, cycling, and other non-motorized displacements that produces zero impact as compared to other alternative mobility modes. Soft mobility supports sustainable mobility aimed at improving urban livability, promoting individuals’ right to move. Soft mobility could enhance urban environment especially reducing the levels of air and noise pollution, road safety and traffic congestion.

Generally, the increase in use of soft mobilities would decrease private vehicle traffic, specifically regarding short trips. Local communities can encourage planning of soft mobility modes (pedestrians and cycling), by adopting measures such as the creation of green districts and mixed land use.

Additionally, other initiatives can be implemented such as the creation of dedicated routes for soft mobility and lower speed limit zones (30 km/h), provision of safe cycle tracks beside the road, provision of protected corridors for public buses, provision of interconnected street road networks. Also, other initiatives include widening of sidewalks, development of street-oriented building, available managed parking for bicycles and multimodal integration with other green travel modes, last mile connectivity, provision of crosswalk, and development of loading zones.

Multimodality for Green Urban Mobility in Local Communities

Presently, local communities and regions face many societal changes that are taking place such as changes in use and ownership of vehicles, new vehicles, novel business models; use of mobile platforms and technologies that empower and facilitate individuals’ mobility, etc. Modern mobility services in local communities comprises public space and transportation planning aimed at promoting greater use of public transportation as a multimodal means which comprises electric mobilities such as electric buses, electric bicycles, electric scooters, trams, etc.

Shared electric mobility services offer a key initiative for lowering fuel consumption, energy use, and pollutant emissions. Thus, the integration of multimodal approaches in public transportation promotes sustainable urban development of local communities.

Multimodality is one of the innovative mobility services provided by municipalities to its citizens to improve their daily travel within and across cities, as it aids urban residents to select from a range of green alternative mobility options.

Multimodality involves an integrated public transportation system which comprises different modes of locomotion. Multimodality provides a low-cost, more efficient, greener and improves citizens quality of life in local communities.

Multimodality provides several advantages towards sustainable public transportation in local communities. Nevertheless, multimodality lies in individuals’ willingness to use public transportation as a means of commuting in exchange for use of private car, as multimodality involves the effective combination of different mode of travel which may not necessarily be fast and may not save time for commuters.

Factors that Influence Green Urban Mobility in Local Communities

The author also finds that there is need for managing public transportation supply and demand through the use of economic plans and instruments for behavior change and urban mobility management.

Measures to improve urban mobility towards achieving higher standards of sustainable transportation need to include the promotion/advertising of an active use of public transportation in local communities for commuting.

Additionally, financing green urban mobility towards a sustainable public transportation is undoubtedly one of the most critical factors in local communities towards achieving sustainable development. Green urban mobility measures are put in place to ensure that the population regularly uses public transportation instead of private vehicles. This involves the provision of investments and the upgrading of public transportation systems adapted to the needs of residents.

Data Driven-Green Urban Mobility Services in Local Communities

Advances in digital technologies such as data are enabling real-time electric mobility asset sharing to improve the efficiency of people moving across the city and reducing cars within and across cities. As such digital technologies such as big data have significantly increased the range of urban mobility solutions provided in local communities.

However, there is significant uncertainty regarding how digital technologies using data will be employed to promote green urban mobility in local communities and regions.

The analyzed and used data sources can be utilized by public transportation providers to monitor and improve their mobility services provided. Also, the processed data can provide a deeper insight on urban traffic context, flow, conditions, and movement of people and vehicles within a particular area of the municipality.

?Data can be applied to facilitate green urban mobility for sustainable public transportation, where data driven applications can provide smart services such as intelligent parking management and support, real-time information during travel, real-time urban traffic management, multi-modal journey planning, and seamless integration of shared green transports. The data can also be used to support advanced journey planning services for travelers and also aid multimodal and intermodal mobility options by routing commuters’ trip into cheaper and faster sub-routes via different public transportation modes.

Access to open data of? timetables, static data, and real-time data from public transportation modes (buses, ferries, flights? departure/arrival, trains, underground and trams, real-time data of vehicles from taxis, buses,? trains, etc.), real-time data from sensors (e.g. traffic camera), in shared electric mobility assets? (electric scooters, electric bicycles, electric bikes, electric cars, electric taxi, etc.), to be used to? promote and manage sharing of electric mobility assets, real-time data from parking lots, real time data from traffic management systems. Also, crowdsourcing data from individuals and/or their devices within and across cities.

Data generated from public transportation infrastructures can be shared to the public as part of the municipality`s open data initiatives as data from public sector are to be freely made available to everyone.

Conclusion

The research concludes that it is imperative to increase the efforts required to engage all stakeholders (local government, residents, private enterprises, and public organizations, universities, research institutions), including non-profit, non-governmental, unions, associations, and more. Accordingly, an active participation of all stakeholders is needed in order to adapt and realize the principles of sustainable public transportation in local communities.

On a national level, green urban mobility policies have the potential to resolve a number of core areas related to climate, energy, and mobility as stipulated by the European Commission.

Presently, the demand for sustainable public transportation is increasing every year. Thus, local communities need to adopt strategically oriented and targeted action plans that will improve the affordable, available, accessible, acceptable, adaptable, and use of public transportation while simultaneously contributing to minimize traffic congestion, lesser accidents, and lower pollution in urban areas. Although, the transition to sustainable public transportation in society and cities will require different strategies, and a “one size fits all” approach will not be adequate.