The project promotes car pooling by combining car sharing, personalised travel plans and a mobility jackpot lottery into one behaviour change campaign.
The CHUMS project addresses the energy challenge of low car occupancy and the ~50% of journeys in cities that cannot be accommodated by conventional public transport modes. The key requirement of car-pooling is that it must be able to compete with the advantages of private car usage. It is based on introducing or strengthening three measures: an awareness raising event – the Carpool Week, a measure aimed at retaining existing carpoolers by holding a monthly prize draw for carpoolers – the Mobility Jackpot Lottery and delivering Personalized Travel Plans, this introducing carpooling as a viable mobility option. Tapping into an abundant, unutilized resource empty car seats the CHUMS initiative aims at reducing congestion with very low costs compared to other measures (e.g. infrastructure for cycling and walking).
The aim of the project is to apply a composite CHUMS behavioural change campaigns in 5 ‘champion’ cites that represent the scale of carpooling and the diversity of mobility mind-sets across Europe: Craiova (RO), Edinburgh (UK), Leuven (B), Toulouse (F) and Perugia (IT). All of the 5 ‘champion cities’ have existing car-pooling systems, at various stages of maturity, which serve ‘closed’ target groups such as work-places, large employers or universities.
Resources needed
Overall budget: 1.521.340,00 € (EU contribution: 75,00 %)
Evidence of success
10% increase in average car occupancy for commuter journeys at target employers
11% increase in carpooling mode share
22% reduction in single occupancy car trips amongst the target groups
9.2% reduction in total car trips amongst the target groups
12% reduction in energy use
The above contributed to a 1992 toe/year primary energy savings and 5788 tones of CO2e/year reduction of greenhouse gas emissions .
Potential for learning or transfer
The CHUMS Network promotes car-friendly sustainable mobility solutions and it is envisaged as a platform to exchange experience, good practice examples and lessons learned to serve organisations interested in developing carpooling schemes. The project itself aims at developing a network with members from each EU28 countries and each EU Accession Countries; to use communication and dissemination channels to foster the take-up of the CHUMS approach.
The CHUMS Network aims at transferring the CHUMS philosophy and experience through communication and dissemination actions.
Tags: Low-carbon, Strategy, City
