Cities across the Baltic Sea Region are increasingly looking for ways to make walking and cycling attractive, safe, and reliable throughout the year. Year-Round Active Mobility is a mindset change to ensure cycling and walking is taken into account as a means of transport throughout all four seasons, both by users and city planners. This interactive workshop invites cities to explore how year-round active mobility can be integrated into sustainable urban mobility planning in a practical and realistic way.

The workshop will provide hands-on guidance and concrete tools to support long-term planning for cycling and walking in changing weather conditions. It requires both supplying technical features and managing citizen mobility behaviors. Through real-life case examples from BSR cities and joint discussion on the challenges such as cross-departmental cooperation, infrastructure maintenance for year-round use, and the need to build stable political support for active mobility, the workshop will show how year-round active mobility can be embedded into SUMP strategies and everyday planning processes. The session is especially relevant for city planners, mobility experts, and decision-makers who want to strengthen active modes as a core part of their mobility system.

Join us to exchange experiences, learn from peers, and identify concrete next steps for making year-round active mobility a reality in your city.

Download the agenda here

Agenda  

13:30–13:45 Introduction of the BSR Urban Mobility platform and insights from a survey on Sustainable Urban Mobility and Logistic planning the BSR, Maija Rusanen, UBC Sustainable Cities Commission/City of Turku       

13:45–14:05 Key note introduction: Planning for year around active mobility - lessons learned from the BATS project – Heike Bunte & Phoebe Schütz, Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg-Borough of Altona  

14:05-14:35 Get to know the available tools  

• BATS Year-Round Active Mobility Toolkit - Lukas Junghanns, Doctoral Researcher, Aalto University, Finland 
• Model for experimenting with active mobility measures (SUMPs for BSR) – Ira Sibelius, Senior Advisor, UBC Sustainable Cities Commission / City of Turku,  

14:35-14:40 Break   

14:40-15:30 From theory to action – case examples from cities  

CITY 1: Scaling a winter agents programme in a Swedish context and Sensitising contractors to YRAM maintenance, Zein Anani & Naomi Zerai Tsehaye, City of Umeå   

CITY 2: Enhancing active mobility through real-time data and innovative road markings –  Vytautas Petraitis, Mobility Analyst,  City of Kleipeda 

CITY 3: Beyond the Pilots: Turku’s Journey towards Year-Round Active Mobility –  Stella Aaltonen, City of Turku    

15:30-16:00 Interactive workshop: The Way Forward – What Is Needed to Mainstream Year-Round Active Mobility in the Baltic Sea region? (30 min)  

The workshop is organized by BSR Urban Mobility project in cooperation with BATS and SUMPs for BSR projects. All projects are funded by Interreg Baltic Sea Region programme.