Good practice:

Engagement of people towards the sustainable and green transport.

The negative impact of the currently most common ways of mobility on the environment is one of the most important social issues. The new technological trend of e-mobility has an incredible potential of lowering the carbon footprint of transport and thus help the environment. Unfortunately, the real-life utilization of e-mobility is on a relatively low level in Slovakia and in other European countries. This is the main problem addressed by the eGUTS project.
The chosen practice focused on improving the current e-mobility infrastructure in eight towns located in the Danube region. Practice tried to achieve its goal not only by improving the e-mobility conditions on the local level of the individual towns but also on the much broader international level of the Danube region. The international level is being addressed by defining universal standards allowing the full vertical integration on all geographic levels.
One of the important aspects of the communication on international and local levels is a mobile app developed by the practice. The app provides the information about the charging infrastructure for e-vehicles in the focused region and helps the users with renting and charging e-bikes.
Public events were also held to promote the topic of e-mobility to the citizens of the individual towns. National eMobility Week Events in 7 cities and areas were organised in September 2018 to enhance the large number of participants of European Mobility Week During this events.

The budget of the project was 1,819,075.00 €.
However no detailed information is provided for the amount of funding resources used to run the activities of GP.

Thanks to the practice, the public perception of Senec citizens has changed in regard to e-mobility. This can be attributed not only to the promotional activities (events where hundreds of people could try the new e-vehicles), but also thanks to providing the real infrastructure much needed in countries like Slovakia. Thanks to all of this, Senec, being the 42nd largest town in Slovakia, is being mentioned as an e- mobility friendly city.

Non-profit organizations are very important and sometimes underestimated players in working with the public’s opinion. Especially when it comes to topics with such a great importance like improving the carbon footprint.

When taking into consideration topics like e-mobility, it is necessary to realise that simply raising awareness may not be enough for helping the environment. Citizens must be also provided with available and affordable options to take advantage. The events where citizens gain important information and simultaneously can try the new ways of transport like e-scooters, e-bikes etc. have a cumulative effect and can help create a much more integrated e-mobility platform than simply pushing people to buy electric cars. These are still quite unaffordable for majority of population in countries like Slovakia even with the government subsidies.
On the other hand, while other types of electric vehicles can help on the local level, electric cars are more practical on the wider national or international level.