Background Aim: Although public transport and active mobility are increasingly common in urban areas, private cars remain the dominant mode of transport in most rural areas. Although many regions offer public transportation, including some micro-transit or sharing services, their potential is not yet being fully exploited. The project “Lösungswege” (Solution Paths) recognizes the potential of rural areas and small towns as a major lever for driving sustainable transformation in the mobility sector and eliminating inequalities caused by poor mobility. It aims to understand the mobility needs of people in the region and identifies the obstacles that prevent them from using existing public services. The wishes and visions of the local population are taken into account in order to build a digital platform that ist tailored to the users’ needs and offers Mobility-as-a-Service in Eastern Styria. Methods: Within the project two group workshops in differet municipalitites were conducted with 35 participants in total. Methods such as self-reflection, perspective shifts and design-thinking were used to analyze personal mobility needs and the needs of certain groups such as older people with mobility restrictions. Based on that participants (further) developed existing and new mobility solutions. A complementary quantiative survey among 557 participants analyzed the mobility habits, needs, acceptance of and barriers for the use of micro transit and sharing services in East Styria. Results: The workshops revealed, that most people would like to see cars become less important. Nevertheless, it is clear that the existing public mobility services need to become more flexible and reliable, as they are currently often perceived as impractical and difficult to integrate into everyday routines. Participants' ideas to promote the use of existing offers included, for example, expanding the validity of annual public transport tickets for the use of micro-transit and sharing, introducing autonomous vehicles in the area, or charging shared electric vehicles with solar power. The survey results confirmed that private cars are perceived considerably more flexible and comfortable by the citizens than public transport. Many participants cite pricing, limited availability nearby as well as complicated reservation and booking processes as dominant barriers. Nevertheless almost half of the participants can imagine using micro-transit and sharing services more frequently in the future. As motivation factors free test rides or closer facilities were mentioned. Conclusions: The collected data provides valuable insights about mobility needs and requirements that a platform for booking various mobility services must meet. Thus it forms the basis for the successful introduction of MaaS in Eastern Styria, which suits the needs of all (potential) users, including vulnerable groups.
Neundorfer et al. (Thu,) studied this question.