Mobility management process - lessons learned

 

OPTIMUM² reveals 20 key lessons relating to the process of designing, implementing and operating mobility management measures. These can be classified as being either resource-related or else design-related.

     

Resource-related lessons

Resource-related lessons can be further divided into people, financial, time and degree of public and political support.

 

 

People

  • Individuals are of key importance when implementing mobility management schemes. Ideally, the ‘right’ people will have excellent interpersonal communication skills to be able to talk to and enthuse their colleagues and others and be well organised.

  • The process of introducing mobility management measures can often be a long and difficult one. So-called ‘project champions’ are therefore needed to ensure that momentum is to be maintained throughout and that problems are overcome.

  • Where ‘packages’ of measures are to be implemented – as is often the case with site-based mobility management plans for example – it is generally worth appointing a travel coordinator (mobility point/manager) who has a clearly defined responsibility for the transport and/or access needs of that site or organisation.

 

 

Finance  

  • Regarding finance, it is obviously important to ensure that sufficient funds are in place when embarking on a new project. 

  • Apparently less obvious, it is also necessary to think about the long term financial future of a scheme long before an initial source of funds runs out.

 

 

Time

  • Experience suggests that measures often take far longer to implement than planned for. It is therefore sensible to budget a contingency period into project planning timescales.

  • Very often mobility management is only considered late in the planning process, by which time permissions have already been granted for development to begin on what may not be a sensible site from a transport planning perspective. The lesson here then, is that mobility managers should force themselves to be heard as early as possible in the planning process. 

 

 

Public and Political Support

  • For mobility management projects to work over the long term it is extremely important to ensure that partners are committed. In some cases, this may require legal contracts to be signed.

  • Projects can be vulnerable to changes in the political landscape. It is therefore wise to develop a contingency plan for the "worst case" scenario.

  • Politicians appreciate being provided with photo opportunities, things to open, and the chance to meet with businesses and the public when in possession of a ‘good news’ story. Consequently, mobility management projects should be designed to provide these in order to generate as much political support as possible.

 

 

Design-related lessons

The key points to come from the design-related lessons can be classified into how to approach the design of mobility management measures and then how to market them.

 

 

Approaching the design of mobility management measures

  • In designing mobility management measures it is sensible to start from a problem driven rather than solution driven perspective.

  • Context is king. Projects need to be flexible enough to respond to changing circumstances.

  • From a project management perspective, it is highly desirable to collect as much monitoring data as possible to allow for comprehensive evaluations to be carried out. However, too much monitoring can lead to user fatigue and so care needs to be taken to achieve a sensible balance.
     
 

Marketing mobility management measures

  • Mobility management tools tend to work best if tailored to meet the needs of a specific target group.

  • When planning to implement a package of mobility management measures, it is good practice to generate momentum by aiming for the ‘easy wins’ first, before moving on to address the more difficult problems.

  • Knowing your market is crucial to the success of any mobility management scheme, and so some kind of fact finding exercises are vital.

  • Once identified, it is necessary to spell out the benefits of the measures you propose to your target markets.

  • The secret to marketing mobility management is to do it indirectly, for example by linking mobility solutions to the viability of business park in relation to its accessibility, or the number of people missing appointments at hospital due to transport problems.

  • Do not expect people to react to long term projections of doom and gloom, for example "it will be so congested around here in 30 years’ time you need to do something now". People tend only to react to problems that are immediate and personal to them.

  • However, still use all possible motivations to get people to consider mobility management.