Walking to the railway station on your way to work, then taking a shared bike to your workplace. In the afternoon you might catch the tram to the city center to meet a friend and then a bus home in the evening.

Multimodality describes the useage of different modes of transport during the same journey. This concept is used for both passenger transport and freight transport and in both cases -  it is now driven by the trends of digitalization. Furthermore, EU Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc has declared the year 2018 to be the “Year of multimodality” – a year during which the commission wants to raise the importance of multimodality for the EU transport system.

Also several important mobility conferences will have multimodality as a main topic. Combining different modes of transport can take advantage of the strengths of different modes, such as price, reliability and speed, and when combined cleverly and user-friendly, it can make transport more efficient for both people and goods.

The challenge for cities is to connect different transport modes as well as to create mobility points where different modes “meet” so that a smooth transition between the modes would be easy. Digital products, e.g. user-friendly applications that can show the user where and how different modes can be combined, can make the transition easier and multimodality more attractive to people.

UBC SCC is concretely working on that topic, under the lead of the City of Rostock and with other UBC member cities in the newly started cities.multimodal project, where cities are planning and implementing the concept of multimodality with creating mobility points in their city.

Multimodality is an important topic also in CIVITAS ECCENTRIC  when it comes to “Mobility As A Service” measures as well as to inner-city freight transport and the last-mile transport concept, where goods are delivered with e.g. cargo bikes to their final destination.

If you and your city are interested in that topic, please get in touch! We can discuss ideas further or provide you with useful contacts or good examples.