The 6th Project Meeting and Steering Committee Meeting was held online on December 13, 2021, and hosted by CERTH. The event saw the participation of 23 project partners' representatives.
Day 1 initiated with a welcome from Maria Morfoulaki on behalf of CERTH. As the project is currently reaching the end of Phase 1 (January 2022), there are only a few pending activities, including the finalization and endorsement of the Action Plans (APs) and the delivery of the reports for Task 1.5 and Task 1.6.
Status and monitoring of Regional Action Plans
Giuliana Famiglietti Pipola from CUE Ltd took over to present the status of Task 1.4 activities, touching on the achievements, pending action, and changes to the original plans, as well as the status of the Action Plans. With the exception of the 2nd Stakeholders' Meeting in Lazio Region, all other activities have been concluded.
Following the above, each region presented their Action Plan. Key insights are provided below:
- The Region of Central Macedonia is enhancing their SUMPs through the existing SUMP Competence Center - in addition, it is fostering the establishment of awareness activities to promote sustainable mobility for students (yearly-based, possibly during the EU Mobility Week).
- The Region of West Midlands is looking at connecting to national and regional funds linked to air quality and the Commonwealth active Community funds, all in view of establishing awareness activities to promoting cycling and walking, such as the training on marketing techniques for those involved in the Coventry & Warwickshire Green Business Programme, the Mass Cycling Event taking place in Summer 2022 in Coventry, and the implementation of the Active School Challenge.
- Lazio Region's AP focuses on cycling and micro-mobility. In particular, the Region is currently fostering the use of the RomaCorreinBici app and several promotional actions for cycling. In order to confirm changes in peoples’ attitudes (people shifting to cycling), the Region is going to repeat the survey that took place during Phase 1 also during Phase 2 of the project.
- The AP for the Bratislava region focuses on the increase of the attractiveness and efficiency of public transport. It comprises of three actions related to, respectively, awareness-raising activities for public transport through a student competition, organisation and realisation of 3 panel meetings with citizens, and implementation of a car-free street event.
- The North Limburg/ Venlo Region is focusing their AP on the Trendsportal Policy Instrument (their regional SUMP), with a plan to use marketing techniques to revise and enhance their regional SUMP. The first action of their AP focuses on capacity building for municipalities, while the second one relates to location-independent working and the third one aims at enhancing the regional SUMP with marketing techniques.
- The State of Hessen had to change their Policy Instrument to Hessen’s Mobility Strategy 2035. The AP for the State of Hessen focuses on two actions: the first one enables, through an online toolbox, a one-stop shop for municipalities to facilitate and support participatory formats and marketing techniques. The second action relates to capacity building for municipal representatives, including training courses and bilateral consultation hours over the topic.
Ghadir Pourhashem from the Bratislava Region finally gave an overview of Task 1.5 on AP monitoring, which allows the enhancement of the resource management planning process and the evaluation of the Action Plans.
Transferability and Dissemination for Day 2
On Day 2, CERTH's Glykeria Myrovali introduced the e-smartec Transferability report, which
brings together the project's knowledge exchange by focusing on the GPs exchanged within the regions and offers an update to the e-smartec e-library thanks to the additional component of the evaluation criteria to support authorities in the selection of GPs. Within this frame, the PROMETHEE software - the software used to correlate the evaluation criteria with the criteria related to the difficulty of applicability of each GP, has been introduced.
To conclude the meeting, Partner POLIS gave an update of the ongoing communications efforts for the project, focusing in particular on the e-smartec e-course and the end of Phase 1 webinars.
Following, a discussion on Project Management unfold.