The Interreg 2Seas project, MOBI-MIX, has shown in the past three and a half years that shared mobility can bring numerous advantages if cities nurture collaboration with private mobility providers and together seek to continuously improve services. Partner cities have experimented with various solutions, such as Mobility as a Service (Antwerp), mobility hubs (Norfolk, Valenciennes), shared cars (Rotterdam), shared e-scooters (Norfolk), shared e-cargo bikes and universal transport schemes (Mechelen).

Although we know that shared mobility impacts various domains (e.g., health, accessibility, road safety, public space, etc.), our work focused on CO2 emissions and private car usage, in particular. To understand the impact of the MOBI-MIX pilots, we used the MObility DEcisions framework (MODE), which is specifically designed to estimate impacts at various project stages. This report demonstrates the method’s flexibility in different cases, depending on the data available and intrinsic characteristics of the solutions implemented. Still, since the data collection in this instance was based on surveys, the number of complete responses was in some cases a limiting factor, preventing from completing all three stages (exploratory, ex-ante and ex-post analyses) in all five cities.

The results show that the total CO2 reduction achieved by MOBI-MIX in the mid-term was between 225,51 – 399,91 tons/year. For a similar timeframe, the project should be able to reduce 2.456.416 car veh-km/year. This is a rather conservative estimate since it does not include some of the smaller pilots where data was insufficient for a comparative analysis (e.g., Rotterdam’s station-based carsharing pilot, Mechelen’s Sharing Neighbourhoods pilot). Still, the results show that the MOBI-MIX project is in line with its initial goals. 

Photo credit: Beryl/Norfolk County Council 

To achieve the full potential of shared mobility solutions and reach beyond early adopters, we recommend longer implementation time frames. The cities continuing implementation past the MOBI-MIX project’s lifetime should seek to repeat the impact analysis regularly, to understand behaviour changes and tweak mobility solutions accordingly. While cities should continue to monitor CO2 emissions savings, they should also analyse a broader set of impacts related to shared mobility solutions, such as time savings, accessibility, or health. Due to the project’s limited scope, these have been only lightly considered in this report, yet cities could expand the MODE analysis to get further insights.

Photo credit: Beryl/Norfolk County Council