Wegbereiter - MOPI-Lab - Active mobility and MaaS as a Pathfinder

The transport sector continues to pose a major challenge for climate and environmental protection. While sustainable and low-emission mobility concepts are already coming more into focus in urban areas, mobility in suburban and rural areas still represents a critical area, as motorised private transport (MIV) is particularly dominant here and attractive alternatives are often lacking. At the same time, the volume of traffic in these areas is of particular importance due to commuting flows and inter-municipal traffic. For example, only about 5% of passenger kilometres in Austria are travelled within cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants; cross-city traffic (up to a maximum distance of 50 km) already accounts for about 15%. The remaining 80% of passenger kilometres are in rural regions and small towns. For a successful implementation of the climate and sustainability goals, it is therefore indispensable to grasp the realities of life of people outside big cities and to find targeted mobility solutions adapted to the respective region. Although different solution concepts are already available, the introduction of far-reaching measures often fails before the actual implementation phase due to various barriers. These barriers to actual implementation need to be brought into focus in order to meet the challenge of successful emission reduction as soon as possible. Based on this initial situation, the following central research question arises: How can active mobility in combination with innovative MaaS offers in a comprehensive package of measures serve as a pathfinder to promote inter- and multimodal mobility behaviour and thus break the dominance of motorised individual transport in suburban and rural areas?