Maximised Mobility and Accessibility of Services in Regions Affected by Demographic Change

MAMBA

PROGRAMME 2014-2020

priority

3 Transport

objective

3.2 Accessibility

MAMBA

The Interreg project MAMBA introduced innovative mobility solutions making public transport, welfare services and goods delivery more convenient and accessible in rural areas across the Baltic Sea region.

The challenge

The Baltic Sea region is facing demographic change with significantly decreasing and aging populations in rural areas. The concentration of employment possibilities and social activities primarily in urban areas triggers travelling from remote areas, while the supply of services covering public transport, logistics (home deliveries) and welfare (home care) is decreasing. As regards so called “people-to-service” mobility, the decline of possibilities to access goods and services in rural areas is significant, especially for vulnerable groups like older and disabled people, or low-income families for whom access to well-functioning mobility infrastructure is crucial for a good quality of life.

As concerns “service-to-people" mobility, when authorities and service providers try to reach out to inhabitants, the tendency is unfortunately the same: a decline in provision of services due to the decreased number of service users and more costly options to offer.

Besides, the decreasing number of inhabitants in rural areas has led to increasing mergers or even closure of vital institutions like hospitals, banks, post-officers, kindergartens, schools, etc. This implies that the inhabitants who still prefer to stay in rural areas, risk getting disconnected.

The MAMBA project aimed to promote “people-to-service” and “service-to-people” mobility solutions in rural areas. The project wanted to introduce innovative mobility solutions such as mobility as a service systems (MaaS), transport on demand (ToD), care sharing and ride-sharing applications to overcome the existing mobility challenges.

Budgets

MAMBA
in numbers

3.54

Million

Total
2.74

Million

Erdf
0.00

Million

Eni + Russia
0.00

Million

Norway

Achievements

Learning together

The MAMBA project gathered 15 partners from 6 countries across the Baltic Sea region to integrate the existing mobility infrastructure with the new innovative mobility solutions. The project targeted local and regional public authorities with limited transport budgets and insufficient knowledge needed for the integration of mobility options. Besides, the project approached public transport and welfare providers interested in more flexible approaches, better financial support schemes, and business cases. For better integration of civil society, the local interest groups and non-governmental organisations joined the project activities.

Mobility Centers established

The project developed nine Mobility Centres (MC), physical and digital, which aim to provide information and services around different mobility solutions. The Mobility Centers demonstrated that substantial cost savings can be generated by integrating different mobility solutions and pooling mobility resources of public and private transport operators. Next, the Mobility Centers served as drivers of interdepartmental and interinstitutional cooperation generating new concepts and ideas in traditional transport planning, such as ride-sharing, flexible demand-responsive modes of transport, or even avoidance of transport through schemes to increase the accessibility of services.

The transnational cooperation proved that the focus should not be on mere financial costs and benefits, but a wider socio-economic value generated through approaches beyond traditional public transport schemes. Thus, bringing together the different stakeholders and breaking the “silos” during the development of the Mobility Centers enabled the involved parties to learn and jointly develop the optimal mobility solutions.

Outputs

Digital Mobility Centre in North Karelia, Finland

The Mobility Centre in North Karelia combines all the relevant transport and mobility data and brings together different forms of public transport in one user-friendly digital platform – a public transport portal called POJO, launched in February 2020, and a smartphone application. The portal shows the timetables and routes of regional buses, long-distance buses, trains, and transport-on-demand services. It contains information about airport coach transfers, taxi services and carpooling groups. The main users of POJO are local inhabitants and tourists.

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Transport-on-Demand service in Vidzeme Region, Latvia

Transport-on-Demand (ToD) is a unique rural mobility solution. It is an alternative to public transport to increase mobility in remote rural areas, where public transport is poor or non-existent. ToD means that a small bus or a typical passenger car can be ordered by telephone. A Mobility Coordination Centre then bundles the demand for rides into a specific route on a specific timetable, so that several travellers can be conveyed on one trip. ToD vehicles adjust their routes based on demand, rather than sticking to a fixed route or timetable. Passengers can also order return rides - a service the users rate particularly highly.

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Rural Car-Sharing and Mobility Centre Cuxhaven, Germany

In Cuxhaven, Germany the municipality has opened a Mobility Centre and gradually rolled out an ambitious concept linking the multitude of conventional and new mobility solutions. The Centre provides information and services about all regular public transport provisions as well as Transport-on-Demand and shared mobility solutions such as the rural car-sharing service in Neuenwalde. A single hotline combining the scattered Transport-on-Demand services in the county has been provided. At the moment, trips can be planned from initial to final destinations, including booking.

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The Mobility Centre in Plön, Germany

The Mobility Centre in Plön, Germany is a digital solution with the main objective of gathering, structuring and providing easily accessible, reliable information about mobility offers. The aim is to make trip planning simple and accessible. In addition to traditional public transport routes, it will continuously integrate the ever-emerging market of new, innovative mobility services in the region. The system is planned to be integrated with tourist offices as part of a digital-physical Mobility Centre network.

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The Mobility Centre in Vejle, Denmark

The Mobility Center in Vejle is a digital solution combining an app for a highly innovative rural ride-sharing scheme with a travel planner connected to the national public transport database. The integration of information about available ride-sharing services and traditional public transport solutions on the selected route offers convenience in mobility planning for the users. Besides, it encourages multi-modality in the countryside, where travel options are scarce. In addition, an agreement with the municipality makes it possible to use public bus stops to pick up and drop off passengers. This way, both transport modes can be easily combined.

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Project Stories

29.10.2020

When the busses stop driving

Accessibility in remote areas is a topic of growing urgency in the vast territories of the Baltic Sea region: The quality of life of elderly and young people in villages is at stake. Interreg Baltic Sea Region is providing EU funding to three cooperation projects to find solutions. The first one, MAMBA, ended in September 2020 – and delivered some very practical results.
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