Lack of funding hinders projects’ long-term success, says Austrian mobility expert

Focusing on behaviour

FGM-AMOR works towards sustainable, environmentally sound and people-friendly traffic development. Its range of activities includes research, consulting, training, and project implementation in the field of mobility management. It works with cities and businesses, predominantly in Austria, and has a network of over 400 partners ranging from governments to consultancies to research institutes and universities. Since 1995, it has been involved in more than 70 EU sustainable mobility-related projects.

"Our remit is not designing roads," explains Mr. Posch. "It is working towards changing behaviour. We work with schools and workplaces, investigating how people travel and how we can change that."

MAX-imising success

Currently, FGM-AMOR's biggest research project is the MAX Project, an initiative funded by the EU’s Directorate General for Energy and Transport. It examines ways of changing public behaviour and marketing alternative modes of transport.

The three-year project will be completed in September 2009, and involves 25 European partners including universities, marketing agencies and municipalities. It investigates ways to engineer more effective campaigns in mobility management; how to better evaluate the effects of mobility management; the standardisation of mobility management; and how to integrate mobility management, land use planning and city building.

"The MAX Project has already been very successful in the field of land use planning and mobility management," says Karl-Heinz. "We arranged day-long workshops which brought together property developers, transport planners and architects at a much earlier stage in urban planning than is usual. This opened a dialogue that allowed opinion sharing, suggestions and feedback and helped encourage sustainable mobility solutions from the outset, rather than as an afterthought. Poland, Lithuania and Slovenia will all continue this process after the project ends."

Projects snagged on funding

Though successful, Karl-Heinz admits that projects like the MAX Project can be complicated.

"It can be hard to manage, especially when it comes to reporting and dissemination," he says. "The universities are keen to teach their findings, while the EU demands detailed half-yearly reports. But lack of funding when a project finishes means many projects work for a few years and then disappear because there’s no one to monitor any resulting actions. We need funding for better dissemination networks to really take care of the post-project dissemination process."

EPOMM a catalyst for exchange

Most projects like the MAX Project are unlikely to feed directly into government policy because of the lack of financial support to sustain them. However, FGM-AMOR has enjoyed considerable smaller-scale success, using initiatives like EPOMM, the European Platform on Mobility Management, which Karl-Heinz manages.

"EPOMM is a knowledge platform that facilitates knowledge exchange between countries, inviting them to share their practices and experiences," he explains. "It is the ideal dissemination platform for findings from our projects."

Mobilising kids

Looking ahead, Karl-Heinz predicts that the most important way to plan mobility management is to target children, something FGM-AMOR is already addressing at the 80 Graz schools in which it runs bicycle education schemes.

"Five years ago, climate change was not an issue. Two years ago, oil price was not an issue," says Karl-Heinz. "As these topics become more important, public awareness increases and attitudes to mobility change. I think the next trigger will be an obesity epidemic. Our children are living an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. We need to get them mobile again, get them playing, get them riding bikes."

Want to know more?

Further information on the MAX Project and EPOMM can be found here:

http://www.max-success.eu/

http://www.epomm.org/