During the 1st meeting (December 2018), the visions regarding the city’s transport were co-created, while at the 2nd meeting (May 2019) the big challenges and regional transport needs were identified along with the values that influence citizens’ travel decisions.
The 3rd meeting, in a form of an extended stakeholders’ group workshop, was realized on Saturday 23th of November 2019 at Thessaloniki’s City Hall with 24 participants. At this point, as we went a step further in the participatory planning of the European PE4Trans project, key stakeholders of the city’s transport sector were also involved, such as representatives of the Organization of Urban Transportation of Thessaloniki, representative of the Thessaloniki's Integrated Transport Authority, the President and the Secretary of the Thessaloniki’s Pedestrian Union.
The atmosphere was cool and relaxed both at the working tables and in plenary.
The aim of this 3rd meeting/workshop was focused on setting priorities as well as taking some initial decisions on the transport practices and behaviors of the target groups we want to change in Thessaloniki. This is an essential step before designing the actions of the action plan that will be the subject of the next meeting in spring 2020.
The participants were asked to identify the most frequent and representative characteristics of profiles of car users. The main conclusions produced towards the achievement of behavior change for more sustainable mobility habits in the region were:
- We want to change the daily car use of parents with little kids (persona: Urania) so that they increase the use of public transport or bicycles due to environmental and health reasons aiming to set a good example for their children.
- We want many, complementary and well-integrated public transport modes, providing increased level of service (frequency, more city areas covered, etc.), air conditioning and wifi, so that busy professionals (persona: Alexander) can plan their numerous daily journeys around the city using PT and taking advantage of the time spent within PT vehicles.
- We want more awareness-raising campaigns for drivers and citizens regarding mobility for people with reduced mobility (elderly) and disabilities group (persona: Danai).
- We want to change teenagers (persona: Leonidas) influencers. We want to promote and multiply “good” behaviors among teenagers in order to influence their friends' behavior, so that they move all together with reduced CO2 emissions and taking advantage of vehicle sharing.
- We want to change the behavior of people who choose car for trips for personal purposes (persona: Nikos) to influence them to commit with themselves to use public transport with a specific frequency per month or per week, e.g. twice a week.
- We want to change the daily transport routine of people living in areas outside of the public transport system network (persona: Persephone), so that they can coordinate their trips with their neighbors and car-pool either to work or to other activities by reducing the number of low-occupancy vehicles in the streets.
