Good practice:

MOBITHESS: Urban Mobility Centre of Thessaloniki for the promotion of sustainable mobility

MOBITHES provides a variate of services to the end users:
Car Routing: Car routing based on the fastest or the shortest route Environmentally Friendly Routing: Provision of the route in which the traveller is less exposed to environmental pollutants and also the most fuel-efficient route
Trip Routing using PT: Provision of the most optimal route using PT
Combined Transport Routing: Provision of optimal routing combining the use of private car and PT
Pedestrian Routing: Routing based on the shortest and safest route for on foot trips.
Traffic condition of the road network: Information concerning real time traffic conditions of the road network.
PT Information: Information related to routes, timetables and stop areas of PT.
Environmental Impact: Information about daily air quality and real time environmental impact due to traffic condition of the road network.
Points of Interest: Information on Thessaloniki's points of interest.
Getting familiar with Sustainable Urban Mobility (SUM): Acquaintance with the concept of SUM and promotion of the use of more environmentally friendly ways of travelling.
Through these services, MOBITHESS aims to enchance citizens/visitors to move around Thessaloniki by sustainable means, promoting PT and sustainable ways of transport and also offers them the opportunity to actively contribute to the improvement of the environmental quality of the city. Finally, through the SUM training, a new culture for urban mobility is formed in the cit

MOBITHESS was being funded 50% from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the financial mechanism 'European Economic Association' and 50% by National Funds. The total funding for the development of the Urban Mobility Centre was almost 1 million €.

After the official inauguration of the Thessaloniki Urban Mobility Centre and until the end of 2019 over 40,000 travellers used its services. The 40% used the travel information of public transport system, 20% used the environmental trip planner and almost 10% used the training tool.
The training tool of MOBITHESS was also used to awareness campaigns in schools and in different open space events in order more than 4,000 people to be informed and aware to issues related to the promotion of SUM

Probably the most important challenges are: the financial resources, the strong promotion of the Urban Mobility Centre, in order to become known by the users, as well as the interest and commitment from both the citizens and authorities in cooperating for enhancing sustainable urban mobility.

The specific practise combines two separate but very important components of sustainable mobility enhancement: the stakeholder cooperation and engagement and the users’ engagement and awareness. Due to the fact that almost all the cities/regions provide at least some of the MOBITHESS services (routing, public transport info, useful info for bike rental etc.), the development of an Urban Mobility Centre, which will integrate these services and will promote the sustainable way of transport is rather easy to be achieved.