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Over the last ten years, we have seen waves of new mobility services cropping up in many of Europe’s larger cities, ranging from ride-hailing through to micro-mobility and clean urban logistics. In this context, public authorities have been reinventing how they work with private sector operators, by balancing tools including regulation, infrastructure provision, data-sharing and subsidisation in order to deliver beneficial services. In order to share lessons-learned and best practice and to encourage other cities to continue moving sustainable mobility forward, the SUMP-PLUS team invited the follower cities group to join the online Marketplaces for Mobility event on 9 June 2021. In total 33 people attended the event, representing both the follower cities and project partners.

Firstly, Cris van Maroey and Annelies Heijns, City of Antwerp, presented Antwerp’s Marketplace for Mobility, which has the aim of shifting citizens’ main mode of travel from car to another more efficient and cleaner alternative. The starting point was to provide information, via the ‘Smart ways to Antwerp’ website with travel information for all (including a multi-modal travel plan), adverts, newsletters, billboards and radio spots. The core of the work began in 2016, when the city invited all mobility stakeholders to a big event, to stimulate the development of new smart solutions and to find partners to implement them with. As a result, and with further calls for partnerships, the city now partners with more than 130 companies of different shape and sizes.

Secondly, Mert Yaman from Kadıköy Municipality - one of Istanbul’s districts and its cultural centre with a population of 500,000 people – presented Kadıköy’s experience of working with mobility start-ups. Being one of the most pedestrian-friendly districts with multi-modal transport access, Kadıköy receives up to 2 million visitors at weekends, and therefore has been exploring new transport solutions. Examples of innovation supported by the municipality include smart parking schemes, Doris - the Autonomous Naval Cleaning vehicle, which uses image processing and artificial intelligence algorithms to recognize, categorise and collect and sea waste on the Bosporus - and E-scooters, which have also proven popular. However due to limited space on roads, the e-scooters were often forced to use pedestrian paths, which led to the 2018 ‘Micro-mobility action plan’ to improve the safety of users as well as pedestrians.

Before and after the presentations, participants joined in discussions by considering lessons learned, as well whether any other the ideas presented, which could be replicated elsewhere. As underlined by moderator, Timonthy Durant (Vectos), “This was a great opportunity for exchange among cities experienced in new mobility solutions, as well as those new to the field”.