Moving Things & People

Widespread interest in transport solutions of the future

Caroline Wendt
September 29, 2020

Cross Mobility (Mobilitet på Tvärs) is a Danish-Swedish project that runs between 2020 and 2022 with support from Interreg ØKS. The name is derived from the notion of shifting across both national borders and modes of transport. A meeting was held in August 2020 to create new opportunities and collaborations. There were about sixty participants who together will develop and test sustainable mobility solutions.

Anna Thormann from Danish Gate 21 and Anders Nilsson at Innovation Skåne hosted Cross Mobility’s August meeting, which included both inspirational lectures and a workshop. Half of the participants attended the meeting in person, while the other half attended digitally. The project is intended to be, among other things, a regional hub in Greater Copenhagen for collaboration on sustainable (social and environmental) and accessible mobility. The collaboration partners will be able to have discussions in a larger setting and by doing so, establish and sustain contact networks.

– In the project, we will connect different types of traffic, find ways to develop new technologies more efficiently and provide the opportunity for information exchange, says Anders Nilsson.

The aim is to test and disseminate new mobility solutions and to identify the areas within mobility that sit in the space between various collaboration partners. The collaboration hub will work on different themes: Sustainable mobility in rural areas through Living Labs, New mobility solutions that increase accessibility in public transportation, Carpooling for improved car usability and a study on how Future commuters and pedestrians will solve their transportation needs.

– Our hope is that the participating organizations will work together to promote new mobility solutions, innovate together and create cross collaborations. To accomplish this, strong contact networks need to be established across the various organizations, and it is positive if we can find ways to meet and co-create, says Anna Thormann from Gate 21.

A good way to get started with a collaboration is to listen to the inspirational lectures, and during the morning there were representatives from some of the current projects on site.

Photo: Elida Cimic

Magnus Fredricson, strategist for sustainable traffic development at Skaraborg municipal association, presented KomILand, which works to combine different types of mobility to improve the reach of services in rural communities or in remote urban areas. A technical platform with mobility services has been launched. The intention of the platform is to make it possible to purchase tickets for public transportation, but also make bookings for carpooling, the village bus, car rentals or taxi.

The company NaboGo have developed an app to facilitate and promote carpooling in rural areas. This way, it is possible to increase mobility in rural areas while simultaneously reduce congestion in the city. Some service that would facilitate this could be automatic payment, designated meeting places and a platform.

At Glostrup station, the municipality have identified challenges with accessibility to and from the station - and this is further complicated by planned renovation work. This allows the opportunity to experiment with new transportation methods and especially explore different last mile solutions. The prospect for ordinary bicycles, rental bicycles, electrical bicycles, electric cars and electric scooters are analyzed.

Michael Johansson and his colleague Torleif Bramryd are researchers in Environmental Strategy at Lund University and specialize in finding ways to evaluate environmental projects and locate success factors. They work on the project Future Intelligent mobility but will also be involved in the Cross Mobility project.

Susanne Krawak, senior consultant at Concito, is part of the project to illustrate organization and financing of mobility systems in Sweden and Denmark and to analyze what the participants can learn from each other. It is important to identify barriers and opportunities for a climate-friendly and flexible transport system.

At the end of August 2020, a new collaboration area for mobility opened in Lund called Mobility Hub South.

The project runs between 1 April 2020 and 30 September 2022 and is funded by Interreg ØKS. There are 17 collaboration partners participating, twelve Danish and five Swedish – amongst them Innovation Skåne and Mobile Heights and the three municipalities Lund (through the Technical Administration and Future by Lund), Sjöbo and Tomelilla. Additionally, there are another 17 stakeholders who are interested in participating.

Photo: Elida Cimic

Translation: Ben Dohrmann

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