While doing research for my last blog post I identified the “Österreich unterwegs” study as viable for my project. Therefore I decided to skimm through it for this entry.
Mobility evaluation “Österreich unterwegs”
The study “Österreich Unterwegs” is a comprehensive research project that evaluates the mobility habits of Austrian inhabitants, currently happening in the third wave. The first time such a research was conducted in the year of 1995. Since the results from the second evaluation from 2013/14 are already outdated a third data assessment phase is currently happening. Roughly 65.000 households are invited to participate in the evaluation on a voluntary basis. The results will be collected and published in 2027. Although the data set from 2013/14 is not representative anymore I still decided to take a look at it. The numbers on motorized individual traffic are especially striking. Almost half of the mobility routes of Austrian inhabitants were cited as done via car. Additionally to the car centered habits the difference between the first and the second report are worth mentioning. While individual transport was already predominant in 1995, it increased from 39,7% to 46,2% in 2014. (1)
It is a bit unfortunate, that the results for the current evaluation will most likely not be published before I finish my thesis. However, I will keep an eye out on new developments and will try signing up for participating in the evaluation, if possible.
Expanding the Horizon
I already did a deep dive into Austrian Mobility habits in the last few blog posts. While this remains the focal challenge of my research, I decided to take a glimpse into other countries. And in terms of green and sustainable mobility the Netherlands seemed like an obvious example. After shortly researching with a focus on the Netherlands I quickly found a tool from a dutch software company called “Mobility Analyst”.
Image: Mobility Analyst Product Demo
Mobility Analyst seems to solve the exact wicked problem that I am working on. With this tool the different commuting approaches and solutions of employees can be gathered and evaluated to implement a corporate mobility strategy for companies (2).
Going back to the roots
After finding about Mobility Analyst I decided to move on and see if there’s any other countries where similar approaches have been iterated. Funnily enough, just after a quick desktop search I once again found myself within the Austrian border. A mobility consulting company from Linz called triply also seeks to find answers to the mystery of conglomerating corporate mobility (3).
Corporate with a focus on employees
In my opinion the term “corporate mobility strategy” aligns well with the german expression of “Betriebliches Mobilitätsmanagement”. However, my prototype will focus purely on the needs of employees and workers. Especially with the two previous examples in mind, I would like to empathize that I do not want to extract KPIs amongst other fancy numbers from this prototype. Instead the outcome of this project must serve employees. Of course, certain benefits can still be concluded for employers as well: for example supporting your employees when commuting can be used as a benefit in the job market.
References
(1) https://oesterreich-unterwegs.gv.at/
(2) https://mobilityanalyst.com/en/
(3) https://www.triply.net/solutions/companies/mobility-consultants
