Antwerp

Antwerp

Antwerp, Belgium

Upscaling successful measures to enhance MaaR.

  • Antwerp is the largest city in Flanders, Belgium. It is a vibrant historic city known for its fashion, art, architecture, and culinary delights. It is also a major seaport and an international centre for the diamond industry. The city’s economic life revolves around shipping, port-related activities, and significant manufacturing.
  • Antwerp is a crucial TEN-T Urban Node within the Trans-European Transport Network. This Belgian port city is intersected by North Sea-Baltic and Rhine-Alpine Corridor. The region has a population of 1.1 million, which has been growing by roughly 8,000 inhabitants per year over the past decade. More than half a million people live in the city of Antwerp.

The City of Antwerp is at the forefront of multimodal urban mobility planning. The ‘Smart Ways to Antwerp’ initiative started in 2016 to maintain accessibility in and around the city during the various major infrastructure works in the Antwerp area; however its scope rapidly expanded and has become part of the city’s SUMP and regional strategy to promote sustainable urban mobility as well as a platform for cooperation between public and private sector stakeholders on the implementation of a range of new mobility solutions.

Antwerp has deliberately chosen not to opt for a system with small MaaS pilots. Instead, Antwerp invites and allows service providers to come to Antwerp not to test, but to use the city as a living lab, to go beyond carrying out a pilot to see whether something works on a larger scale. In this way, potentially viable concepts are able to prove themselves.

The City of Antwerp

In addition, once or twice a year, the City of Antwerp launches an open call. Interested providers can submit a specific project aimed at reducing congestion to be rolled out within the year. As Antwerp recently became part of a wider transport region under the Flemish authority combining public and on-demand transport, there is potential to improve the cooperation between various actors in the mobility landscape. The city therefore wants to upscale its digital tools to the level of the Functional Urban Area (transport region of Antwerp).

Mobility challenge

The ‘Smart Ways to Antwerp’ initiative has developed a shared marketing strategy addressing different target groups (residents, employees, visitors, companies, mobility providers, etc.). However specific strategies and functionalities addressing minorities/specific hard-to-reach user groups (e.g. disabled, young and senior citizens, migrants) ensuring equitable and inclusive access in line with MaaR is still missing. How will upscaling the multimodal digital tools impact the users’ demographics? What new different needs do the new users have that perhaps have not been considered in the previous developments?

Governance challenge

How can different actors (private or public) in the mobility landscape better cooperate to create a comprehensive mobility offer on both urban and regional level in an integrated, seamless manner? How can the collection and use of data be organised on the regional level to achieve the same quality of data as on the urban level? How can different responsibilities be allocated and how can be the cooperation between different public authorities formalised?

Objectives

Upgrade the Smart Ways to Antwerp initiatives to align with MaaR and upscale it to the FUA Inclusive policy making approach

(ENGAGEMOVE)

The case is very advanced, with policymakers having many plans and tools at their disposal. Therefore, the use case adopts a highly focused approach. Serious games and co-creation methods will be employed to engage non-users, potential users, and policymakers. This will involve addressing MaaR, fairness, and accessibility for diverse user groups based on social characteristics like age, disability, gender, and geographical location. Additionally, these methods will help develop societal characteristics and governance frameworks when introducing new services to the MaaS service or route planner, ensuring that these services meet sustainability and mobility justice criteria, including more inclusive car-sharing and micromobility options.

Digital support (GO-X module):

GO-KNOW will support the upscaling of the “Smart Ways to Antwerp MaaS tool” by evaluating data sources and computational needs for the Functional Urban Area. It will enhance inclusion by validating data and technologies to tailor functionalities for specific target groups. Additionally, GO-KNOW will streamline data adaptation and standardization processes, fostering public-private collaboration, improving accessibility in the transport region of Antwerp and providing policy makers with decision support.

Stakeholders involved

Institutional: Flemish Region; Big mobility demand generators: Large employers within the FUA and Port of Antwerp; Service providers: Mobility Service Providers and Public Transport Authority; Wider groups: FUA citizens and stakeholders; Minorities: disabled, young and senior citizens, migrants.

GOLIA footprint

PUMS update; upgrade of Smart Ways to Antwerp MaaS tool aligned with MaaR.

Pilot sites