With the purpose of spreading the goals of sustainable urban mobility through shared e-mobility across Europe and helping cities and regions in setting out their mobility hubs strategy, the first eHUBS academy day started with a series of welcoming activities jointly organized by the city of Bergen and the eHUBS project’s team. A city walk where it could be observed first-hand the vibrant shared e-mobility landscape of the city, and a dinner with a spectacular view to the city at Fløien Folkerestaurant on top of Mount Fløien, were part of the pool of activities thought for our students to warm up and get into Bergen’s approach to urban mobility.
As it has been in previous editions the city of Bergen, located in the west part of Norway and surrounded by a breath-taking landscape full of fiords and nature, became the perfect setting for our students to start thinking of mobility hubs strategies for their cities and regions. And it was so, as Bergen has truly embraced the sense of shared e-mobility as the backbone of its urban mobility plans and strategies. While the academy walked through the city, the urban built showed an extensive and varied network of shared e-mobility and active mobility hubs, ranging from neighborhood hubs to much bigger hubs combining infrastructure for carsharing, bike-sharing, and even dedicated infrastructure for shared e-scooters.
We opened our second day with a high-level lineup of speakers, which included the city chancellor of Bergen and the representative of the Dutch embassy in Norway. The opening was followed up by an intensive 4-hour morning session, which included everything cities and regions need to know from the policy and planning processes of implementing shared e-mobility hubs.
During the session, eHUBS pilot cities' representatives, as well as external experts from the ShareNorth project, shared their policy and planning experience resulted from deploying eHUBS strategies, leading to to-dos and don'ts when it comes to implementing shared e-mobility hubs. The morning session wrapped up with a presentation on the digital pillar of shared e-mobility, which is a key dimension for local and regional authorities to take the right policy choices when planning their mobility hubs strategy. During the afternoon session, the academy went on a bike ride through Bergen kommune's mobilpünkten, visiting the wide range of mobility hubs that make Bergen one of Europe’s most eMobility-friendly cities.
During our third and last day of the eHUBS academy, the activities included a dedicated planning workshop, where our students applied all the knowledge and lessons learned during the theoretical sessions to implement mobility hubs within their cities and regions. During the workshop, participants made use of maps of their neighborhoods, cities, and regions; plans of their public transport network, energy network; and information about neighborhood demographics, businesses, and available mobility services. After having planned a mobility hub tailored to their needs, our students engaged in a 20-minute feedback session to present their cases and exchange ideas.
Finally, the academic activities ended with a theoretical session on the importance of communication and nudging strategy to foster the take-up of mobility hubs, and a presentation of the latest research results of the study on behavioral change and mobility hubs carried out by eHUBS project partner Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS).
As a final and rewarding moment after three days of intense work and fruitful exchange between the academy students, our hosts the city of Bergen, and the eHUBS team, our students received the official eHUBS academy diploma that certifies they are ready to roll out their mobility-hubs plans!
