Transforming a city through mobility
Gävle regularly ranks as one of Sweden’s most sustainable cities and has high ambitions to grow and transform in the coming years. Gävle is growing. The municipality recently passed 100 000 inhabitants and like Uppsala the municipality has struck an agreement with the government to develop new sustainable city districts, a modern logistics park in exchange for new rail infrastructure connecting to the East Coast Line (Ostkustbanan).
This poses both an opportunity and a challenge - the municipal council have set the ambition that Gävle should be climate neutral in 2030. Therefore, all city development must take a progressive climate approach. As of today, more than 70% of Gävle’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, most of which comes from the use of cars. Although more than half of our citizens live within 15 min of their work or studies by bike, citizens transport account for 42% of our territorial emissions. Transitioning to sustainable transportation is crucial to reaching our climate goals. This means taking mobility management into our city planning structures and applying this approach to both the built city and all new city development. Gävle is currently updating its strategy for public transport and investing more in bike infrastructure. We are working on street structure in the inner city to increase safety for all traffic and increase biking, walking and public transport. This is also meant to make the city center greener and nicer, increasing commerce, culture and attracting visitors. The transformation of Näringen district from industry to of Europe’s most sustainable city districts aims to serve as a spring board for the transformation of mobility throughout the rest of the city.
At www.gavle.se/cykel you can find our cycle plan, a map of all bike pathways ongoing projects and campaigns involving biking.At www.gavle.se/miljo you can find our Environmental strategic programme, our climate action plan, our bicycle plan and more.
At www.gavle.se/hallbarvardag we are engaging citizens and helping them make changes in order to lower their emissions and save money at the same time
Gävle is part of Viable Cities, a network of cities working together towards climate neutrality in their respective municipalities by 2030.
Gävle is also part of the network Global Goals for Cities. In this video we explain more about Gävle’s work and visions for a more sustainable municipality and how it relates to the UN global goals.
In 2030 in order to achieve climate neutrality we want to drastically transform transportation within the city by: - Doubling biking share of transport- Doubling share of public transport- Moving heavy transport out of the inner city
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The Challenge
Gävle city has devised a cycling campaign known as "Year- Round cyclists," combining an information initiative with an app to incentivize users to use their bikes regularly by offering points that can be redeemed at designated city stores. The campaign may also involve recruiting workplace ambassadors to promote cycling. However, Gävle city may face broader challenges in executing this campaign, such as:
- Identifying effective nudging interventions to encourage behavior change.
- Scaling the innovative communication campaign to larger companies and encouraging "bike ambassadors" to motivate colleagues to cycle.
- Determining the most effective types of incentives (such as social recognition, financial rewards, positive reinforcement, joy, and fun) to drive greater cycling participation.
- Strategizing the placement of ambassadors throughout the city, such as in dedicated stores or large central companies and organizations, to promote the campaign.
- Evaluating the potential financial benefits to business owners through such nudging interventions.
The proposed sustainable transportation initiative includes a technical platform (in the form of an app or similar) and a reward system to encourage users to adopt sustainable transportation methods. The information campaign will educate users on the benefits of sustainable transportation, while also providing information on how to plan and optimize sustainable transportation routes.
The reward system will track user transportation choices and provide them with points based on their sustainable choices. These points can be redeemed for rewards from local businesses. To ensure the success of the campaign and app, partnerships will be formed with local businesses, transportation authorities, and community organizations. The partnerships will facilitate the provision of real-time data on public transport schedules and bike lane information, offer discounts and rewards to app users and promote the campaign to encourage adoption of sustainable transportation methods. To achieve the desired results, innovative communication models need to be tested.
When implementing a technical platform, such as an app, with a reward system, it is crucial to anticipate and address potential challenges. Identifying these challenges and prioritizing them will enable the development of solutions to overcome them effectively.
One of the most significant challenges that may arise is low user engagement, which can impede the success of the platform. Other challenges may include lack of funding and limited partnerships with local businesses and transportation authorities and more besides.
To overcome low user engagement, prioritizing this challenge is essential. One possible solution is to improve the reward system by offering more attractive and valuable rewards to users. Additionally, creating a sense of competition among users by displaying a leaderboard or organizing social media challenges can increase engagement. Integrating gamification elements, such as badges and achievements, can also motivate users and improve their engagement.
By prioritizing the challenge of low user engagement and implementing these solutions, the sustainable transportation information campaign can increase user participation and ultimately achieve its goals of promoting sustainable transportation methods.
The task of the teams here is to: Identify the challenges that the city of Gävle will have if the city decides to implement such a technical platform in reality, prioritize three of these challenges and finally identify the best solution to the first priority challenge.
The teams that have realistic solutions will have the opportunity to work towards the implementation of such a platform together with the Sustainability InnoCenter team and the city of Gävle.
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