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Aggiornamento del Piano Urbano Mobilità Sostenibile di Ravenna

TRT Trasporti e Territorio è una società di consulenza indipendente, con sedi a Milano e Bruxelles, specializzata in mobilità ed economia dei trasporti, pianificazione e modellistica. TRT ha recentemente utilizzato le informazioni sulla mobilità di Teralytics per stimare la domanda di mobilità del modello urbano di simulazione multimodale dei trasporti. Questo lavoro è stato svolto nell’ambito del Piano Urbano della Mobilità Sostenibile di Ravenna.

Le linee guida europee e nazionali per la redazione del PUMS si pongono l’obiettivo di realizzare un sistema di mobilità urbana sostenibile al fine di migliorare la qualità della vita nelle città e nelle loro aree funzionali. Il PUMS si concentra sul miglioramento dell’efficacia e dell’efficienza del sistema della mobilità, della sostenibilità energetica e ambientale dei trasporti, della sicurezza della mobilità stradale e della sostenibilità socio-economica degli interventi proposti dal piano.

L’analisi dei dati di mobilità forniti da Teralytics ha permesso al gruppo di lavoro incaricato di redigere l’aggiornamento PUMS (TRT, META, ITL), di determinare i modelli di mobilità e descrivere le caratteristiche chiave della mobilità urbana di Ravenna. Ciò ha permesso di individuare le migliori strategie e aree di intervento per influenzare positivamente i cambiamenti della mobilità necessari al raggiungimento dei target prefissati.

Il valore aggiunto dei servizi erogati da Teralytics consiste nell’offrire un’analisi della domanda di mobilità basata su tecnologie Big Data, con dati aggiornati e aggiornabili nel tempo, in grado di rappresentare con un elevato livello di dettaglio e granularità le caratteristiche e le abitudini di mobilità delle persone.

Mobility insights that reflect the changing world

If we could sum up the conversations we’ve had with our customers throughout this year, it would be about coping with change. For two entire years, 2020 through 2021, a previously fairly stable mobility baseline morphed into an extraordinarily dynamic, remarkably complex mosaic of travel behaviors. At first, it reflected the uncertainty of the pandemic and necessity of policy response. Many had hoped that 2022 would be the year of recovery and return to normality. What we’ve seen instead, is an evolution in mobility that can no longer be pegged to any single event or policy, rather a cacophony of influences both personal and societal in nature.

Our mobility choices reflect our own personal journeys through the pandemic and the changing economic reality. Our sense of safety and personal comfort vary immensely. Our choices do, too. Some of us have had to, or may have chosen to, go to work every day, while some have swapped commuting for remote work altogether. Many of us are still finding our own happy middle ground.

Some of us are rethinking our modal choices due to the environmental imperative to cut carbon emissions, as well as changing fuel and travel costs. As we witnessed during the recent nationwide 9-Euro-ticket initiative in Germany, which made rail transport extremely affordable over the summer, our price sensitivity when it comes to choosing public transport is, at least at the moment, very high. While this is good news for the environment, it is also reflective of the global struggle to keep up with inflation. Pinching pennies includes rethinking how we travel.

Factors influencing mobility today are many, and we believe this will continue to be the case. We cannot tell for sure whether we will be able to find a sense of calm in 2023, whether new normality will be found, or what it may look like should it arrive. What we are extremely proud of is the fact that we can measure it. Quickly, accurately and comprehensively.

The ability to understand mobility choices and how they are changing will be the superpower of savvy transportation planners in the years to come. Our mission is to be there with you every step of the way.

Throughout this year, we’ve introduced a number of new capabilities to our Matrix platform, reflective of your growing need to understand and measure mobility and many of its manifestations, provide evidence for your proposed initiatives, and most importantly, measure progress towards your goals.

Please visit our new Matrix page and get in touch, tell us what you think.

Teralytics for traffic models with VMZ – Webinar

New approaches to public transport planning and traffic management are needed to meet the changing mobility needs.

Traditional methods of mobility demand analysis are unable to keep up with the pace of change. They are also not fully representative – non-commuter traffic and journeys from adjacent areas are rarely adequately captured.

VMZ, Berlin-based transport consultancy, is working with Teralytics to break new ground and build reliable and representative traffic models with the use of up-to-date mobility insights available on demand.

In this webinar, Georg Polzer, co-founder of Teralytics, and Siegurd Müller, demand and public transport modeling expert at VMZ, demonstrate how to effectively incorporate latest mobility insights into your traffic models, prioritize actions, and track progress.

Watch the recording here. (Note: the video is in German language only.)

If you are interested in how Teralytics’ mobility insights can help you understand mobility demand and manage transport planning, please get in touch.

The Renaissance birthplace undergoes a sustainability transformation

Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, the EU mechanism for outcomes-focused urban mobility planning, places transportation goals in the context of broader environmental, social, and economic sustainability objectives.

Lowering atmospheric and noise pollutants, reducing road congestion, and improving road safety are among the goals that the Metropolitan City of Florence, the capital city of Italy’s Tuscany region, aims to achieve as part of its SUMP. In doing so, the city has shifted focus from traditional road traffic-oriented transportation planning towards sustainable mobility planning focused on enabling various sustainable modes of travel.

Florence released its SUMP in 2019. Three years and a global pandemic later, the city recently unveiled the outcomes of the first SUMP monitoring, coinciding with European Mobility Week 2022 at the end of September.

Using Teralytics’ mobility demand analysis and in collaboration with http://www.tpspro.it/TPS Pro, the Metropolitan City of Florence aimed to assess the impact of the actions planned in the SUMP as well as to quantify the effects of the pandemic on mobility demand both at the overall level and in terms of its modal distribution among the various transport systems (private vehicles, public transport, and active mobility).

The analysis of mobility demand in the region covered a period of two years, from November 2019 through November 2021. During this time, Florence experienced an overall reduction in weekday mobility of 23 percent and 28 percent on weekends. These findings are consistent with the city’s ticket data for its tram network – which saw a drop in ridership of 33 percent. Many findings are consistent with the COVID-19 impact on urban areas across the globe, with road traffic increasing slightly while public transport usage contracted.

Biennial monitoring of the SUMP and its updating every 5 years are necessary to assess the effectiveness of the actions planned, but it is also necessary to understand how new ways of organizing work (smart working, hybrid modes) affect and change the mobility system. This issue has become even more important, in light of the events exogenous to the transportation system, to verify, integrate, and modify planned actions for increasing transportation sustainability.

Is the 9 Euro ticket initiative the future of public transport?

The German government’s recent nationwide initiative, which enabled everyone to travel on public transport for 9 Euros per month throughout the summer, prompted a tremendous amount of conversation within the transport industry, government and media – both in Germany, as well as across Europe.

With governments everywhere grappling with the energy crisis and looking for ways to alleviate the impact of skyrocketing inflation, could such an initiative have sufficient impact to make a difference in people’s day-to-day lives? Furthermore, with ambitious climate goals ever so slowly translating into initiatives with measurable positive outcomes, could such drastic price incentive entice people to swap car journeys for public transport?

Teralytics has been monitoring the initiative’s impact since its introduction on the 1st of June, keen to understand whether it may prove to have a lasting effect. Our data has also been used by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, Destatis, as well as the media to understand its impact.

The immediate impact was clear – the number of train journeys skyrocketed and remained high all the way till the end of the initiative on the 31st of August. Our data analysis was consistent with that of our partners. Destatis noted the 42 percent increase in rail travel in the first month of the initiative compared to the same time period in 2019. Zeit Online called the interest in rail travel enormous.

After the initial awe, two follow-on questions were on everyone’s mind: Has the road traffic been reduced due to the initiative?; and What’s likely to happen once the initiative ends?

Many factors impact people’s preferences when it comes to mode of transport – accessibility, convenience, length of journey and weather conditions being just some of them. The timing of the 9 Euro ticket initiative over the summer also meant that the seasonal effect of summer holidays had a significant impact on how the initiative played out.

We analyzed rail and road trips throughout the summer and drew a comparison between the same time period in 2019 and 2022. The above graph tells the story most effectively – while we saw an increase in over 40 percent in rail trips during this time, road trips over 30 km also decreased by a few percentage points throughout. While the percentage change may not seem large, in absolute terms it means that a meaningful number of what would have been car journeys became train journeys over the summer. Note the near immediate return to the levels observed in May once the initiative ended.

This is consistent with the analysis done by VDV, the Association of German Transport Companies, which concluded that out of some 52 million rail tickets sold in this time period, one in ten buyers forewent at least one of their daily car journeys.

In order to add some color to the nationwide analysis, we also looked at how the initiative played out across a number of city pairs in Germany. The Berlin – Rostock connection needs little introduction, as the media used this popular summer holiday origin-destination pair as an example of train overcrowding this summer.

Here we compared the 9 Euro ticket period with time directly before and after (full May and Sept up until now). While we can see an increase in road trips, the increase in train trips is remarkable – over 250% for certain weekdays.

A very different city pair, Düsseldorf – Köln, is one of Germany’s most frequented commuter connections. This 45km long city-to-city center journey is well connected both by train and road. We wondered whether the initiative would impact modal split in this prominent commuter scenario.

Here, a clear decrease of approximately 10% in road traffic can be observed on weekdays. As this is a May to September 2022 comparison, the effects of more people working from home post pandemic can be ruled out.

So what conclusions can policy makers and transport authorities worldwide draw from this? Behavioral change is notoriously difficult to achieve when it comes to influencing people’s mobility decisions. Is it then worth investing in such initiatives at a large scale?

Looking at the data – absolutely.

The carbon emission reduction targets in transport cannot be achieved without meaningful nationwide policies. We can not stop at simply setting the targets, but must do the hard work to get there. Our customers in Italy understand this firsthand, as cities throughout the country are now tasked with monitoring the impact of their Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans and updating their strategies accordingly.

Ongoing commitment and iteration of initiatives based on their impact is critical for the creation of truly sustainable communities where public transport is central to people’s mobility choices. We look forward to seeing the impact of similar initiatives in Spainthe UK and beyond.

 

Navigating tourism demand with mobility insights

See how visitBerlin used mobility insights from Teralytics to understand changes in tourism demand, explore growth potential, and optimise Berlin’s tourism offering.

Tourism is experiencing an upswing, but what trends are emerging and how can we prepare for them?

In this webinar, Teralytics, visitBerlin and Saint Elmo’s Tourism Marketing discuss how destinations can deal with uncertainty, and make their destination marketing and demand management more resilient.

Watch the highlights from the webinar in this video (note: the video is in German):

Expert panel:

You can download the presentation slide-deck below:

If you are interested in how Teralytics’ mobility insights can help you understand and manage tourist demand, please get in touch.

Naples: Vision for the future starts with understanding the present

The third largest metropolitan area in Italy, Naples is also the country’s most densely populated urban environment. In order to tackle congestion and pollution from road traffic, Naples has sought to create a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, a strategic approach to transport planning which, following the EU Guidelines, places emphasis on integration and efficient use of mobility resources.

As a goal, sustainable transportation is a sum of a number of interconnected objectives. Promoting a modal shift from car to public transport, connecting transport links more efficiently to meet the shifting mobility needs of its population, encouraging more people to travel by bike or on foot – are all priorities that Naples metropolitan area authorities wish to consider in creating an intelligent, better accessible mobility system.

In order to evaluate how the transport network is currently used by the Naples inhabitants and those who commute or travel to it, the authorities turned to Teralytics to understand the overall mobility demand.

In partnership with the working group that takes care of SUMP elaboration of the Metropolitan City of Naples – Sintagma, TPS Pro and TRT Ingegneria – Teralytics’ mobility analysis makes it possible for Naples to identify key areas where it can introduce change and influence mobility behaviours most effectively.

Teralytics’ sophisticated privacy-first approach to understanding  people’s journeys and factors impacting their choices makes it possible to arrive at an accurate analysis of current mobility trends swiftly, rendering lengthy and expensive manual surveys obsolete.

“Naples’ vision for an intelligent and dynamic mobility system can serve as an inspiration for metropolitan areas around the world,” said Michele Casà, Business Development Director for Teralytics Italy. “We’re thrilled to be able to help the area’s authorities make the right choices towards a more sustainable and resilient mobility system by providing a thorough understanding of how people utilise its transport network currently.”

“This is one in a series of projects across Italy that TPS Pro has collaborated with Teralytics on,” said Nicola Murino, Technical Director, TPS Pro. “We believe that by embracing an always-on, inclusive approach to mobility analysis, our customers can understand mobility needs of their constituencies faster and in a manner better representative of everyone. In the aftermath of the pandemic and the shifts in mobility behaviours that have occurred because of it, it is clear we need a more dynamic approach to transportation planning in order to affect change.”

Municipality of Brescia monitors SUMP outcomes with Teralytics insights

In 2017, Italy implemented the EU guidelines on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), requiring all municipalities with over 100,000 inhabitants to propose mobility strategies to promote better environmental, societal and economic outcomes in their areas. A key focus of SUMPs is the promotion of sustainable modes of transport in order to lower transport’s environmental impact.

The Municipality of Brescia, which is at the forefront of the SUMPs initiative, approved the implementation of its sustainable mobility plan in 2018. The city has now chosen to partner with Teralytics, applying its innovative technology to monitor traffic trends and understand mobility demand over time.

“Unlike many cities that have yet to adopt a SUMP, in our case the challenge is to build a monitoring system,” says Federico Manzoni, Councillor for Mobility Policies in the Municipality of Brescia. “This is necessary for us to better understand current trends, identify critical issues, and analyse response capacity of existing and planned infrastructures and services. Teralytics’ support in this activity is particularly valuable to us.”

Building resilient transportation systems is key to urban recovery

How can we make cities more resilient to disruptive events? Teralytics is proud to be a part of a three-year MOTUS initiative funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, which aims to create a set of recommendations to help cities build and maintain sustainable transportation networks.

Teralytics will contribute to the creation of a data-driven simulation platform, which will enable cities to analyse the impact of disruptive events on their transportation systems and identify effective solutions.

Join us for the virtual launch of the project on:

Wednesday, 26th January 2022
1:30-3 pm CET

You will have an opportunity to learn more about the project and ways to participate. To register, please email Lara Westphal at [email protected].

For more information about the project, please see here.

Hitting the restart button on tourism with mobility insights

Teralytics launches its Tourism offering with visitBerlin as an inaugural client

While we may have put our wanderlust on hold over the past year and a half, the desire to travel is very much a human need and one that a growing number of us are exercising again.

Yet, it is undeniable that our travel choices and behaviours have been impacted by the prolonged requirement to hunker down. So, as the world starts moving again, tourism destinations the world over are wondering what to expect and how to adjust to any changes in tourism demand that is likely to emerge.

Utilising our knowledge of human mobility and our experience in working with transportation customers to help them understand the shifts in people’s mobility needs and preferences, we have extended our focus to tourism to help the industry navigate change and build resilience into their destination marketing and management.

Understanding where visitors come from and how they interact with destinations empowers cities and tourist boards to offer relevant incentives and experiences to potential tourists, grow demand and adapt daily operations to match demand.

We are building a network of tourism consultancy partners to help us empower destinations everywhere to put themselves on the map. Outstanding tourism consultancies, such as Saint Elmo’s Tourismusmarketing and COMPASS, have already joined our programme.

We are also incredibly proud to count visitBerlin, Berlin’s official tourism and congress management organisation, among our inaugural destination customers. In partnership with Saint Elmo’s Tourismusmarketing, Teralytics will enable visitBerlin to gain a full understanding of existing tourism traffic, potential for growth, and ways to optimise Berlin’s tourism offering.

If you are interested in how Teralytics can help you attract and manage tourist demand, please get in touch.