Eurocities Mobility Forum: Sharing Urban Mobility Insight on a Pan-European Stage

The Eurocities Mobility Forum took place last week on 31 May – 02 June 2023 in Porto, Portugal. The first day of the forum kicked off at the beautiful Tram Museum venue of the city (“Museu do Carro Electrico”). The attendees consisted of representatives of cities and Urban Nodes from all over Europe.

Apart from networking activities, many SCALE-UP partners not only attended the forum but took the centre stage and used the opportunity to share best practices and innovative measure ideas from SCALE-UP and also emphasise the call for fellow cities of the project to the attendees.

Day 1

During the first day of the forum, Lola Ortiz from the city of Madrid participated in a public panel together with representatives of the cities of Porto, Munich and Brno as well as Róbert Szűcs, Project Officer at the European Commission DG MOVE. She shared how Madrid is consolidating different modes of transport on a bigger scale and how the multimodality and alternative fuel offer can influence citizens and tourists travel behaviour. It is no secret that one of the main challenges that Madrid is tackling within the SCALE-UP project is to establish cycling as a solid and viable part of the modal share. To this extent, the project supports radical extensions of the cycling network and an expansion of the BiciMAD rental system beyond its current borders.

Lola Ortiz at the second panel of the conference

Michiel Penne representing the SCALE-UP project during the reception

During the following cocktail reception, the SCALE-UP Urban Nodes Platform was launched. All three SCALE-UP urban nodes were able to present their projects in a relaxed way and inform interested cities of the activities, objectives and how follower cities can get involved and learn from the SCALE-UP findings. The session was organised together with sister project MOVE21, which was also represented by its three Living Lab cities.

Day 2

The second day started off with a joint workshop between SCALE-UP and its sister project MOVE21, on multi-level transport governance. Both projects were funded under the same call, tackling complimentary issues in the respective project cities and running for the same amount of time (4 years). Apart from a liaison behind the scenes, it has proven important and effective to share insights also with a wider audience. The panellists accepted also questions and remarks from the audience, leading to some interactive discussions.

Pedro Fernández, Andrés Monzón and Mari Luz Brownrigg-Gleeson introduced the successful multi-level stakeholder and governance cooperation in Madrid and how policy initiatives can be cooperative beyond the scope of the municipality on a regional and national scale.

Katia Kishchenko took the stage to share how connectivity and multimodality offers can round off a successful mobility offer for citizens and freight alike. Many European urban nodes aspire to achieve a successful seamless integration of modes of travel into their existing offering, infrastructure and plans.

To conclude the session, Dirk Engels and Stella Aaltonen shared how each measure can be evaluated and considered on several contexts (urban, peri-urban, functional urban area, national, TEN-T) in resource- and cost-effective ways, which are achievable by any city no matter their size or available funding.

The conference was complimented also by site visits to the local Porto mobility network, workshops, a feedback session on TEN-T urban nodes, and networking opportunities amongst the Eurocities members and other European organisations. The rich programme ensured an insightful exchange of heuristics, knowledge, ideas and a lot of food for thought.