Rewarding sustainable urban mobility measures in Toulouse
City: Toulouse
Audience: Others
Topic: Mobility Management
Step in the SUMP cycle: Step 7: Select measure packages with stakeholders
More Information:
Eltis.org
Activity description
Since 2012 Tisséo-SMTC, the public transport local authority of Greater Toulouse, has been encouraging companies and administrations located in the Toulouse urban area to continue and foster their actions in the field of sustainable mobility towards their employees. For this purpose an award named ‘Trophées Ecomobilité Tisséo’ was set up. Every year, during the European Mobility Week through an official ceremony, several organisations are rewarded for their efforts and receive prizes linked to urban mobility dedicated to their staff. In addition, the reward is a unique piece of art designed by a local artist especially for the occasion. Although these results are extremely encouraging from a public transport perspective, the private car remains dominant. As part of Toulouse’s Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) mobility management is identified as a key element in changing mobility behaviour, together with further developing the transport network. One of the actions refers directly to recognising organisations for their achievements through a ‘quality label’ award to further their urban mobility commitments.
Lessons learned
Each year since this setup, the approach has been evaluated in order to better adapt the selection process to improve the quality of the future editions. In the first year a panel of representative local organisations was created. The evaluation methodology proposed to work on two areas: firstly, to test the evaluation grid of the labelling project and to participate in a communication and marketing co-building workshop to determine the name and visual identity of the label/award. Secondly, employees were involved in an online survey during the French Sustainable Development Week to assess their readiness to join the initiative.
One of the first challenges was to gather local partners to obtain their support. The second was to involve companies and administrations from the beginning of the process to ease their acceptance of the project and ensure the submission of their contributions. Each year, there is much effort to encourage companies and administrations to apply. This initiative is mostly transferable to cities or local authorities involved in encouraging WMPs or commuting plans in their urban area. Rewarding organisations for their commitments towards sustainable mobility remains a good opportunity to tighten the links with those who can influence urban mobility behaviour changes.