New Mobility Solutions to Fight Transport Poverty And Exclusion in European Cities and Regions

Abstract

The lack of public transport options often means less access to goods and services, to job market, education, and recreational activities, which they all impact on the human wellbeing and social cohesion. People who do not have enough resources to access to more expensive mobility options could be automatically excluded from society. At the same time, other capabilities such as physical and mental health play a key role in social exclusion particularly in some deprived urban neighborhoods or remote rural areas across Europe. Vulnerable user categories such as mobility impaired and elderly people, youngsters, low income and unemployed persons, socially excluded or poorly integrated communities, migrants, etc. face a major risk. The social aspect of transport is key in addressing current societal issues such as migration, raising poverty, social exclusion, ageing society. The EU-funded project INCLUSION (http://www.h2020-inclusion.eu/) is an addressing public transport accessibility, inclusivity and equity in a number of mobility conditions, including urban centers, deprived neighborhoods, remote rural areas and various user segments affected by some form of transport vulnerability or poverty. During its duration, the project is innovating the way transport is designed, organized, operated for the targeted user groups along three main investigation strands: Enabling technologies (ICT, ITS) through dynamic planning, optimization, operation; mobile Apps; IoT devices, wearables; social media; etc; New organizational and service provision forms such as vehicle sharing, co-ownership, liftsharing, flexible transport (DRT), combined mobility, MaaS; Social Innovation as a mix of new elements different from traditional transport economies based on the production and consumption of services/commodities. Innovative accessible transport solutions are being tested in Pilot labs in Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain and the UK with the purpose to finally transfer them to other prioritized areas across Europe.