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What are FastTrack’s local areas’ ambitions? What local success stories can inspire them, and serve to help them accelerate their own deployment of mobility innovations? What obstacles are they facing? What topics are they primarily interested in? These are some of the major questions FastTrack is aiming to answer with its ongoing Needs Assessment; and early answers are already becoming clear.

FastTrack brings together 24 cities and areas from all over Europe. They all have practical experience with sustainable mobility planning and the deployment of relevant innovations in their local contexts, and are keenly interested in bolstering these efforts via exchange and peer-to-peer learning. This is where the FastTrack Needs Assessment comes in.

The Needs Assessment comprises an online-survey and in-depth interviews, in which each FastTrack local area is participating.

Preliminary results are already pointing to some interesting insights. Climate change has been cited as a major trigger prompting the development of some of these sustainable mobility and transport innovations. In many cases, congestion is rather mentioned as the main motivation.

Acceptance from citizens and politicians, and the creation of partnerships with different stakeholders (e.g. universities, private mobility solution providers) were discussed in all interviews. Some cities and areas have rich experiences in these areas.

Quite a few of the interview-partners saw “big data” as having important potential to enhance the efficiency of mobility solutions. Others expressed interest in accelerating the implementation of logistics strategies. Cycling in the functional urban area (including e-bikes and bike-sharing) is another topic several partners are strongly interested in. Another group of cities and areas wants to work on complex solutions that a characterised by an integrated approach and multimodality. These are the four topics the FastTrack learning communities will be built around.

Perhaps the most important result from the Needs Assessment was that all the partners are highly committed to engaging with FastTrack in this work. All of them are “fighting” for sustainable mobility at home, in their cities or areas, and count on additional support from FastTrack.