eHUBS partners met in Dublin, Ireland on 20 and 21 October to discuss the latest project progress and results. It was an exciting meeting where the eHUBS consortium members presented valuable achievements on the eHUBS development, as well as the latest eHUBS research results in topics such as travel behavior and CO2 emission reductions.
The meeting was a 2-day extensive event involving consortium presentation and site visits around Dublin.
Some of the highlights of the partner’s presentations:
- Geraldine Meloney – ESB, Ireland – opened our day-1 meeting in a beautiful historic Clayton Hotel. ESB is now focused on renewable resources and e-mobility development as a part of sustainability and innovation focus of the company. As an example of ESB proactive social position, a company launched “ESB e-bikes" and “EVP2 pilot” on a community-based e-car club.
- City of Amsterdam – continues a success story, by reporting the launch of 18 eHUBS with the involvement of citizen participation mechanism, to maximize the potential benefit of the citizens. eHUBS in Amsterdam involve e-bikes, e-cargo bikes, and e-mopeds.
- City of Leuven – started 38 eHUBS and parklets stations around the city. the biggest shared mobility companies operating in Leuven, such as Cargoroo, Urbee and Cambo get a constant increase in repeated users. E-cargo bikes from Cargoroo have a 75% reliability score by citizen users and are mainly used for shopping and leisure. The same patterns are also seen withing the other partner cities. Shared mobility users in the city are satisfied with the e-mobility option and tend to refer to them as a substitute for a second car.
- City of Dublin – besides existing ESB e-shared mobility solutions the city is also working with the Bee Network – a gamified solution promoting shared mobility, that offers a token return to the user.
- Greater Manchester – the focus of the city is an integration of multimodal journeys. They operate currently 25 e-cargo bikes and 8 car-club vehicles. The users return to the e-shared mobility services is more than 80% at the moment, which stimulates the area to invest even more in eHUBS development.
- City of Nijmegen and Arnhem – cities currently operate 14 eHUBS (11/3) and e-cargobike services. Cities shared some insights on how they promote eHUBS among the citizens and tourists, mainly underlining the importance of geotargeting, offline events, and presentations, as well as a step-by-step explanation of the e-shared mobility use.
- City of Dreux – has also started with the e-bikes and e-cargo bikes shared mobility services. Citizens mostly used them for leisure and weekend travels. However, due to rapid increase of energy prices, private investors operating e-shared mobility had to close all e-bike stations.
- Vikki Trelfer – Scotland/ HITRANS – explained the Scottish “Go-Hi” MaaS service that aligns all mobility solutions in the city in one – public transportation, bikes, and e-bikes. This all-in-one solution shows an extreme participation rate within the citizens, which is now more than 1000 constant users per day. Furthermore, autonomous buses that now operate free-of-charge has also been started and added to the “Go-Hi” app.
- Region of Wallonia – started an aligned eHUBS in 6 municipalities within the region, which is now 15 eHUBS in total. The system in Wallonia differs from all the partner-cities of eHUBS, as Wallonia had to establish an overarching regional institution to align different cities among Wallonia to coordinate eHUBS implementation and development.
- Mpact – explained and presented the plan to subsidise 4000 eHUBS station by 2027.
Besides the latest update on the eHUBS’ implementation in cities, research partner Newcastle University presented valuable insights on its latest eHUBS research.
Some of the highlights included:
- Research study on people’s intention to use a shared electric vehicle confirmed the following user patterns, such as:
- Citizens with a pro-environment position tend to be pro-shared mobility users, as well as are more likely to become early adopters of e-solutions in the neighborhood. However, those users with no environmental position or negative attitude to environmentalism tend to ignore existing e-mobility solutions and therefore, build a barrier for the use of e-bikes/e-cars, etc. Negative attitudes promote further dismissal of the possibility to use eHUBS.
- Data research targeted mostly public transportation users and cyclists.
Besides the cities’ presentations and latest research achievements, partners shared their advice on how to enforce eHUBS in the best way to achieve maximum public acceptance rate, and thus, increase the probability of use in daily life. The most common advice was:
- Increase visibility of an e-micro mobility solution (color, print, interactive area, size, etc.)
- Create the most user-friendly eHUBS stations and apps
- Enlarge recognizability within the citizens
- Clear communication on what is allowed and banned
- eHUBS integration to Google Maps.
- Constant promotion, video, and ads geotargeting
- Offline educational and presentation events
- All-in-one app solution to harmonize all mobility sectors in the city
This list is not extensive; however, it is a clear reflection of the partner-city experience. Furthermore, neglecting any of the following advice can lead to drastic decrease in usage of e-shared mobility.
