SuMAC · Sustainable Mobility, Affordable Cities: How do workplace sustainability plans shape transport affordability in Brussels and Sofia?

Sustainable Mobility, Affordable Cities: How do workplace sustainability plans shape transport affordability in Brussels and Sofia?

The SuMAC (Sustainable Mobility, Affordable Cities) project aimed to examine the impact of employer-led workplace mobility measures on the affordability of employees’ travel to work. The project addressed the growing gap between research focusing on the environmental impact of urban mobility, and studies of transport’s role in social inclusion. The project tackled aspects which has been taken for granted in research and policy on workplace sustainable mobility planning. Firstly, workplace mobility plans have generally been associated with formal strategy documents, implemented by large office-based workplaces operating fixed working times. By contrast, in the SuMAC project, I examined mobility planning in small workplaces where shift work is common, and where measures related to commuting tend to be informal and ad-hoc. My rationale was that much of the currently available research and guidelines draw on the experiences of large workplaces with greater organisational and financial resources, while these experiences have limited relevance in other types of organisations. The project thus specifically addressed the mobility planning practices of small and medium-sized workplaces in the private sector. Second, the project aimed to re-connect concerns around sustainable mobility with the affordability of transport and its role in connecting urban inhabitants to economic opportunities. As these two sets of questions have been examined in increasingly separated domains of transport and mobility research, the deep connections between environmental and social sustainability have often been rendered less visible. SuMAC thus examined how workplace mobility measures have implications for the sustainability of everyday urban travel and the ability of workers to afford it. The project focused on small and medium-sized tourism, hospitality and catering workplaces in Brussels, Belgium and Sofia, Bulgaria. These were chosen in order to explicitly address organisations where low-paid and precarious work is common, working hours are organised in shifts and can be unpredictable, and employers often have insufficient resources to engage in formal mobility planning. I aimed to understand the extent to which available sustainable mobility guidelines are applicable to these workplaces, and how measures which combine environmental priorities with social inclusion goals can be made more prominent in sustainable mobility planning.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз