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Innovative solutions for sustainable mobility of people in suburban city districts and emission free freight logistics in urban centres.

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - CIVITAS ECCENTRIC (Innovative solutions for sustainable mobility of people in suburban city districts and emission free freight logistics in urban centres.)

Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2020-11-30

Many European city centres have been transformed recently into attractive and liveable urban espaces, but some challenges remain, such as meeting the accessibility requirements for freight deliveries and commercial traffic while preserving the attractiveness of public space. Another main unattended question is the design and test of mobility solutions in diverse topics adapted to the distinct challenges in high-density peripheral districts. To tackle these challenges, the cities of Madrid, Stockholm, Munich, Turku and Ruse have joined forces in the CIVITAS ECCENTRIC consortium.

This consortium is led by city administrations with a common interest to increasing the impact of their local policies on sustainable urban mobility, and it includes a variety of public and private partners from the five cities, with the City of Madrid acting as coordinator.
Furthermore, the project has developed a huge uptake and replication potential to other cities sharing the same problems and need of change across ECCENTRIC networks and other countries. The local consortia have demonstrated the impact of a package of innovative integrated sustainable urban mobility measures on key indicators, reducing emissions and air pollution, and improving accessibility, liveability, social inclusion and efficiency through changes towards multimodality, more active modes and attention to the mobility of vulnerable groups. One in four measures have been successful in this potential of replication, after the evaluation and replication work done.
The general organization of ECCENTRIC Project was designed along 2015 and 2016 by all the city-partners led by the City of Madrid.

The overall objective and impacts of ECCENTRIC have been be reached by working collaboratively on the following specific objectives:

- To demonstrate and test integrated packages of innovative solutions for sustainable mobility in peri-central living laboratory areas, combining new policies, technologies, trial and error innovative projects, new strategies and regulations, and soft measures.
- To demonstrate and test innovative solutions for cleaner and better urban freight in urban centers, based on a close cooperation with the research and private sectors.
- To contribute to the knowledge base and capacity building over the effectiveness of more complex and people-focused mobility solutions and how to overcome the barriers for their implementation. Many good results have been adopted by other cities for replication.
- A big effort to communicate and exploit the results has been addressed within the last period through the ECCENTRIC PEDR, adapted to the new COVID situation, with the aim to discuss and improve the solutions in a wide environment, through communication and networking. The project has also drafted a first analysis of the conclusions in the new situation post COVID-19.

Each CIVITAS ECCENTRIC city has developed an integrated multimodal approach aiming at demonstration of a set of complementary and reinforcing mobility solutions in the defined living laboratory areas. Experienced city partners with a proven track record in the respective field have led the project’s six thematic demonstration work packages and have cooperated with the technical coordination for the animation of the structured exchange and cross fertilisation mechanisms.
The project has prepared a large collection of dissemination and replication materials, mostly in short audiovisual formats to enhance the discussion and further development as a legacy of the work done within the financed period.

The expectations are that the inclusive and innovative approach and results of the work done may have a deep influence in the further knowledge-basis for the long term necessary sustainable urban mobility shift and new urban models.

Some innovative approach has been directly replicated or analysed for replication in other cities, i.e. the E-mobility nodes (from Stockholm to Turku and Madrid), the maintenance of cycling and walking itineraries in cold weather (from Munich and Stockholm to Turku), the dialogue marketing for MM from Munich to Turku; the parking management from Stockholm to Amsterdam, the pop up or tactic strategy for testing a change from Stockholm and Madrid to Turku. The replication has been object of detailed study through an academic research linked to ECCENTRIC, through articles and master thesis that are going to be conntinued in next months.
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