| |
The CARAVEL project was part of the EU Programme CiViTAS.
(You may want to download the CIVITAS
brochure.)
CARAVEL started in February 2005 and ended, after a period of
four years, in 2009.
Four European cities (Burgos, Genoa, Kraków, Stuttgart),
under the leadership of the municipality of Genoa, planned on
implementing 55 projects/ measures, all related to the eight policy
fields defined by the CiViTAS-Initiative. CARAVEL consisted of
22 partners, representing city authorities,
transport operators, system and software providers, government
agencies, universities, research and consultancy companies.
|
| |
The Mayors of the four cities fixed the mission to all active
partners and local stakeholders: "We commit our cities to
establish a new culture for a clean urban mobility balancing sustainable
development, citizens well being and safe access to all transport
modes."
The objectives of CARAVEL reflected the priorities of most medium-sized
cities in Europe for an integrated transport policy and respond
to major urban policy challenges :
- To base energy consumption in transport increasingly on renewable
resources.
- To minimise traffic-related air and noise pollution and other
negative environmental impacts, thus to improve the health and
well being of all citizens.
- To change transport behaviours and patterns of man and goods
- To promote and set-up new forms of vehicle use and ownership
including bicycles, car sharing, car pooling.
- To improve the service quality of public transport through
seamless transport modes and new service offers.
- To optimise the distribution of goods in inner city areas.
- To ensure safe and equitable access to working and cultural
places.
- To care especially for the needs of vulnerable and disadvantaged
citizens.
- To establish a broad social consensus for a clean urban mobility.
Mobility plays a crucial role in the urban policy agenda of the
four CARAVEL cities. While developing and providing attractive
incentives for clean and efficient public transport and restricting
unacceptable personal mobility patterns, Burgos, Genoa, Krakow
and Stuttgart use a "carrot and stick" policy for stabilising
positive trends and developing vital cities.
CARAVEL focused on holistic and integrated approaches for sustainable
urban transport, extensive awareness campaigns towards politicians,
professionals, civil servants and citizens, test and implementation
of alternative transport modes and innovative transport services.
Implementation - Lighthouse Measures
- Current Status
During the 1st project year the main workload concerned preparation
and management issues:
- Set-up of efficient local and project wide working teams and
establishment of tangible partnerships
- Preparation of a detailed 4 year work plan for each of the
54 measures
- Launch of 46 measures: information and awareness campaigns,
round-table-discussions with all local and regional stakeholders
concerned by the measures; development of new mobility services
and concepts; tenders for construction work and service contracts
- Definition of internal and external reporting processes.
- For all the measures, evaluation plans and criteria have been
agreed in order to verify the expected results.
- Signature of the CARAVEL
Accord on 6 June 2006 in Krakow : The Mayors of the four
CARAVEL cities have reconfirmed jointly their commitment to
the project.
The 2nd and 3rd project year concentrated on the service and
technological developments and the first actual implementations
and field operations:
- Gas-fuelling station, testing of CNG buses and bio-diesel
buses, collection of used oils
- Installation of traffic management centres
- Introduction of access restriction and traffic bans
- Development and establishment of high mobility corridors
- Extended round-table discussions and exchanges with all stakeholders
concerned by the measures to be realised
- Mobility Marketing campaigns such as open forums, Internet
sites, information centres (fixed and mobile), banner and poster
campaigns, workshops with pupils and students, incentive initiatives
- Innovative alternative transport modes : car sharing, van
sharing, car pooling, mobility plans for large organisations
and large public events, bicycle renting, demand responsive
transports (DRINBUS, DRINTAXI)
- Large participation of project partners at the major CiViTAS
events (CiViTAS Forum 2006 in Burgos and 2007 in Kaunas) as
well as in other major conference on national and international
level
At the same time, the collaboration and exchange between the
cities and their measures was intensified, leading to tangible
know-how transfer and increased mutual understanding.
On the project level, the Project Managers, the Evaluation Manager
and the Dissemination Managers worked closely together with the
three other CiViTAS projects (MOBILIS, SMILE, SUCCESS) in order
to share experiences and to mutualise and strengthen the evaluation
and dissemination efforts.
The 3rd project year also saw the mid-term review when all measures
were put to test in order to identify particularly positive results
and issues which requested readaptions in the implementation processes.
The good results were appreciated by the European Commission and
as all modifications were accepted.
The 4th year which started in February 2008 focused on the evaluation
of all measures and the preparation of lessons learnt in order
to provide best practice examples to other cities in the world
interested in the establishment of clean urban transports
|
