Newsletter #2 | www.empowerproject.eu | Horizon 2020

“Business models play an

integral role in EMPOWER.

Technology has to be

designed to be a part of a

business providing value to

stakeholders, and evolve the

service to meet the

requirements of users."

- Anders Hjlalmarsson,

Senior Researcher

Sustainable Transports

In This Issue

Take-Up Cities: Odense

Living Lab: Enschede

In the spotlight:

Benjamin Groenewolt

Social Innovation: the

EMPOWERed method

Interview with Frances

Hodgson

Upcoming events

Welcome to Newsletter #2 EMPOWER is a pioneering research project exploring the various ways in

which we can encourage individuals to reduce their car dependence and

enjoy alternative travel options by rewarding change using positive

incentives, delivered through social media and digital technologies.

Funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 programme, this

project combines empirical research with practical implementation in

four Living Lab Cities, seven Take-Up Cities and a strong global

community of Follower Cities and organisations. In this second issue you

will learn more about one of our Take-Up Cities, Odense, our Living Lab,

Enschede, the importance of Social Innovation, and upcoming events.

EMPOWER Newsletter #2 September 2016

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020

research and innovation programme under grant agreement no 636249

Newsletter #2 | www.empowerproject.eu | Horizon2020

TAKE-UP CITIES: ODENSE

ODENSE: The Key Facts

Odense is the third largest city in Denmark, with a population of 200,000.

Odense is one of the main educational centres in Denmark, home of the University of Southern Denmark and many

other higher educational institutions.

Odense is the island of Funen's most important industrial and commercial centre, and the city's central location makes it

one of the national convention and congress centres in Denmark.

Aims

As an EMPOWER Take-Up City, Odense are building on their experience with promoting cycling. Odense plan to work with

all their citizens and will be distributing campaign materials to all households. The city wants to encourage citizens to walk

or cycle more often on short distances rather than taking the car, and will introduce positive incentive schemes focused on

tracking trips, challenges, battles and gamification. These positive incentive schemes will include a cycling campaign based

on the app Go Bike Denmark (Ta’ Cyklen Danmark), and a campaign ‘Biking Friend’ focusing on encouraging school children

to cycle more through a gamification cycling app. This app will also be used to help young students with social/mental health

issues gain better mobility by being able to cycle to school. The City of Odense will also introduce a walking campaign, with

regular events at local markets, bakeries and supermarkets.

Odense hope to convert 36,000 daily short car trips to either walking or cycling trips, resulting in a decrease of 15% of car

trips on distances under 5km.

Methods

Odense will use focus on advertising and publicity marketing to help spread awareness of their campaigns. This will include

social media, the distribution of specially made flyers/postcards and other materials in public and to households, outdoor

posters, featured articles in popular local magazines, supplying cafes with take away coffee cups featuring the campaign

details and more. For Odense’s positive incentive schemes, giveaway prizes

include bike helmets, rain ponchos, candy boxes and rewards include bikes, gift

cards to the cinema, the zoo, shops, restaurants and many more.

Progress

Odense is already busy implementing its various schemes. The promotion of the

city’s Bike Friend campaign began in August, and Go Bike and the Walking

Challenge kicked off at the beginning of September! The EMPOWER website will

be regularly updated with the progress of our Take-Up Cities.

EMPOWER has seven Take-Up Cities: Antwerp, Bologna, Budapest, Milan, Newcastle, Odense and Reading. Take-Up Cities

will be trialling EMPOWER tools and techniques in their own city and transport context. Throughout our forthcoming

newsletters, we will be taking a closer look at individual Take-Up Cities, their main aims, the methods they will be using, and

the progress they have made so far. In this issue, we feature the city of Odense.

Ready to go! Promotional material ready to

be distributed in Odense

Newsletter #2 | www.empowerproject.eu | Horizon2020

The EMPOWER concepts, new software and organisational business models will be tested in real life city situations with actual travellers within each of four Living Lab Cities. Working with local partners, these four experiments will be responsive to the travel situations in each context and will test the different incentives and services most relevant to each city. All incentives are designed to reduce the use of conventionally fuelled vehicles. One of EMPOWER’s Living Labs is Enschede.

Enschede’s mobility management plan focuses on creating a modal shift from the private car to more sustainable modes of transport, with currently 3% public transport, 42% cyclists and 55% private motor vehicle use in the city. The city works on the implementation of sustainable urban transport measures in cooperation with the University of Twente, the regional government and several private partners in the fields of behavioural change, communication technology and marketing.

The principle partner is Twente Mobiel who promote health and flexible working, whilst also reducing costs by influencing the travel behaviour of people. The core of current mobility measures is a bicycle plan and as part of the programme Beter Benutten 2, the city of Enschede will build some extra bicycle routes, finish the network of dedicated bus lanes and will develop several campaigns to promote cycling.

Implementation of EMPOWER in Enschede will consider the following actions:

use SMART to stimulate people to cycle, offering reward points for cycle trips and focusing on regular non-bicycle users. In addition to the existing SMART tool, personalised messages will congratulate people on the number of bicycle journeys they have made and the time savings they have achieved;

use social media in combination with

these personal messages and achievements so that users can challenge work colleagues and friends, organise a group and start a competition;

organise a buddy scheme for the elderly

so they can find somebody to travel with on public transport.

Living Lab: Enschede Enschede: The Facts

Enschede is a city of

160,000 inhabitants

located in the east of

the Netherlands within

the region of Twente.

Formerly a centre of

textile production, it is

now part of the high

tech knowledge region

with a concentration

of ground breaking

companies specialising

in systems and

materials, with many

excellent partnerships

and spin-offs between

education and

research institutions

and local companies.

A modern, vibrant

university city, Enschede

focuses on mobility

management measures

for a shift towards the

more sustainable modes

of transport.

Newsletter #2 | www.empowerproject.eu | Horizon2020

In the Spotlight: Benjamin Groenewolt Benjamin has worked with the Municipality of Enschede for several years, where he has been involved in various mobility projects (SMART, SUNSET) as well as the development of two hybrid buses. Benjamin is involved in a wide range of topics: reaching from a feasibility study on changing commuting behaviour of students to implementing a dynamic platform allocation system for a bus station. Within EMPOWER, Benjamin is managing the implementation of the positive incentives schemes within Enschede.

Why does Enschede need to reduce the number of conventionally fuelled vehicles?

Enschede has the ambition to increase the modal share in favour of the bicycle to increase liveability in the city and decrease air pollution. Also, there are a number of inbound corridors which suffer from high congestion rates in the morning peak hours. A reduction of the use of conventionally fuelled vehicles should ease this problem.

What innovative solutions are you trying within the Enschede Living Lab?

Using the SMART app, we will aim to deliver personalised challenges to participants. By relating the challenge to a person’s own situation, the challenge becomes more appealing. We will use the innovative incentive engine to distribute challenges and rewards to the traveller.

How will you encourage people to take part?

The personalised approach should make the challenges as appealing as possible. Also, we will work with local shop owners to provide a rich assortment of rewards which people can earn when achieving the challenges.

Which improvements to SMART are you developing in Enschede?

The main effort in SMART is in the use of the incentive engine. The aim is to automate the personalisation of challenges as much as possible. Working with user groups, parameters based on past behaviour and a user profile, we should work towards a personalised approach without overspending on the management effort.

How is gamification part of SMART?

SMART has two main gamification elements. Completing a wide range of challenges is one of the main game elements of SMART. For all challenges, you can score points based on your performance. The other main gamification element is challenging your friends. For example, in group challenges you can see a group leader board of the friends who participate in the specific challenge.

What do you hope traffic will look like in Enschede in 10 years time?

In ten years time, we hope that the cycling will be the main means of transport in Enschede. As a result, peak hour congestion is reduced as less car trips will be made. Also, neighbourhood liveability will improve as car parking space can be substituted for bicycle parking or even allow for more green areas in the streets. For those cars still in use, electric driving and sharing communities should be the new norm.

Newsletter #2| www.empowerproject.eu | Horizon2020

university city, Enschede

more sustainable modes

Social Innovation: the EMPOWERed method

Using recent empirical studies throughout the world, EMPOWER has identified the key factors leading to the success (or failure) of social innovation interventions in the transport sector. We found that the definition of social innovation based implementations in the transport sector is problematic and widened the search criteria to include sharing economy based schemes and ‘sharing schemes’. This enables car sharing, bike sharing, walking school buses, as well as less formal implementations to all be included in the review.

The table overleaf providers an overview of social innovation in the transport sector. The factors that make a scheme successful cover both operational-type factors which look at efficiencies and organisational form and what users find attractive about the schemes. We found that the key determinants of success in sharing schemes in the transport sector are trust, convenience, reduction of effort and cost. Factors that indicate failure include liability and mistrust.

New areas for research include:

Exploration of ‘groundswell’ type movements coupled with social media to self-organise transport schemes;

the effectiveness of incentives with social innovation for transport schemes;

mixing methods to exploit social media analysis in combination with GPS services and traditional transport surveys; and

identifying the role of municipalities and other stakeholders in social innovation schemes.

Newsletter #2 | www.empowerproject.eu | Horizon 2020

Social innovation

in transport

sector

Determinants of success Obstacles

Car sharing

(the practice of sharing a car for regular travelling, especially for commuting)

Anonymity

Focus on utilitarian rides

Flexibility and personalisation of ‘free floating’ schemes

Management and administration to build trust

Convenience

Cost saving

Hassle saving

Environmental impact reduction

For journeys difficult to do by public transport including taxi

Taxation confusion

Lack of policy implementations to support in the form of additional benefits such as parking concessions

Insurance policies

Peer to peer (P2P) car sharing schemes

(the process whereby existing car owners make their vehicles available for others to rent for short periods of time )

Social organisational strategies to increase trust

Convenience

Monetary benefits

Expand mobility options

Sharing under-used resources

Trust issues

Preference of big company to P2P

Liability

Transport policy support such as parking concessions

Insurance policies

Taxation confusion

RideSharing Personal security e.g. reputation scores, vehicle tracking

Density of potential users

Trust issues

BikeSharing Location (250m of workplace)

Opportunity for theft and vandalism reduction

Stakeholder engagement

Convenience

Monetary savings

Health benefits

Environmental impact reduction

Compulsory helmet wearing legislation

Redistribution and rebalancing of bicycles

Walking School Buses

Time savings

Enjoyment and pleasure

Information and promotion

Time constraints

Road traffic safety concerns

Recruitment

Social Innovation Expert: Frances Hodgson Frances Hodgson is the leader of the Investigating Social Innovation work package, and the Co-Investigator of the EMPOWER project. In addition she is the co-lead with Prof. Susan Grant-Muller on the design of the Living Lab in the UK and the lead of the micro-experimental work in the Interventions and Behavioural responses work package.

How does social innovation impact on the reduction of conventionally fuelled vehicles? There are a wide range of social innovation based schemes such as bike-sharing, car sharing, ride sharing, walking groups such as ‘school walking buses’. In recent years there has been a rapid growth in the number of schemes, see for example, www.bikesharingmap.com and EMPOWER deliverable D2.2. Engagement with users is growing through app development and social networking. Evidence is growing and suggests that the new form of car-sharing schemes using ‘free-floating’ cars result in less car use and much more multi-modal behaviour (Kopp et al, 2015) Evidence on bike sharing schemes in the USA for example, shows an increase in bike use and subsequent reduction in car use. (Shaheen et al 2014) How important is critical mass for schemes to be successful? The importance of size varies with scheme. For car sharing and ridesharing schemes the size of the social network and the critical mass is important to ‘match’ users and service, car or ride that is being offered. The magnitude of the group of users can be significant in determining how well a scheme can meet the travel needs and spatial dispersion of the users. In bike sharing schemes it is the relationship between the numbers of users and spatial location of bikes that becomes critical. More recent developments are for app developers to offer ‘open source’ resources for smaller communities to start their own bike-share scheme. Is there a role for local authorities in encouraging sustainable transport choice? Many cities are recognising that there is a growing innovation in the measures and implementations that they can encourage and support. Cities play a vital role in implementing creative and dynamic business models that as a result, bring together and engage with a diverse range of stakeholders, such as app developers, or community groups. In many implementations the cities are the glue, the factor that ensures successful collaborations. Cities also have a role in sup-porting with infrastructure planning and design, for example for shared bike schemes the evidence is that spatial location for the bike stations can be a significant determinant of success and cities play a key role in locating stations to make them attractive to use. (EMPOWER deliverable D6.1 Brochure 2016; Chan and Shaeen, 2012; Bachand-Marleau et al, 2012) In addition cities have a role in influencing the ‘status’ and image given to the scheme and subsequent attractiveness to users. How are personal benefits determined by socio-economic status? The key findings of our review work on EMPOWER shows that there is variation among users in social innovation based schemes. We have found that age, gender and income levels are significant. Different schemes are attractive to different groups of people for example, bike sharing schemes seem to be more attractive to groups that have higher incomes, are younger and are more attractive for men more than women.

Newsletter #2 | www.empowerproject.eu | Horizon 2020

Newsletter #2 | www.empowerproject.eu | Horizon 2020

1.

2.

ITS World Congress 2016

10th—14th October 2016

http://civitas.eu/content/civitas-forum-2016-draft-

programme

Melbourne, Australia

UPCOMING EVENTS

IEEE 19th International Conference on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITSC 2016)

1st—4th November 2016

https://web.fe.up.pt/~ieeeitsc2016/

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Newsletter #2 | www.empowerproject.eu | Horizon 2020