From 28th - 29th June, the Interreg Europe Policy Learning Platform organised a workshop in Thessaloniki, Greece. The main topic of the event was behaviour change and participatory processes for sustainable mobility. At the workshop, 50 policymakers on behaviour change for sustainable mobility were present, including the PriMaaS LP Jorge Bandeira and the research fellows Sofia Suárez and Beatriz Fernandes, from the University of Aveiro.
The PriMaaS representants requested a matchmaking where the policy challenge is within the context of mobility planning and co-design of MaaS bundles, presented in the form of the following metaphor:
The general concept is imagining that we already have the ingredients to make the "MaaS" Cake (e.g., open and standardised data, the possibility of selling services to third parties, and consolidated legal structure).
The questions now are:
1) How can we design the various layers of the cake (offer different services such as bundling) to please different target groups in different regions with different tastes and needs?
2) How can we ensure that the cakes are green? What are the specific incentives to reduce the carbon footprint per passenger-km?
3) How can we conserve the cake? I.e., what are the incentives (funding, subsidies, involvement of the public and private sector) so the cake is economically viable?
The matchmaking had meaningful insights from Georgios Georgiadis, from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Vasilis Mizaras, from CERTH/HIT, and Dr. Stefanie Schwerdtfeger, from Hessen Trade & Invest GmbH, peers from across Europe who have shared recommendations based on their experience and expertise. The roundtable also counted with municipal and inter-municipal authorities from Greece, Germany and Portugal, who have also shared challenges faced within their regions.
