How can we catalyze the shift to sustainable urban mobility?

How can we accelerate the transition to more sustainable mobility?

Leuven is a medium-sized city with a population of 100,000. One of the characteristics of the city is that, in addition to the 100,000 inhabitants, we have 50,000 students.

As part of the “Missions Cities” project, we aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. One of the most important projects we’ve implemented is a very radical traffic plan in the city center, where we have doubled the pedestrian zone and carved out the area to impose restrictions on car traffic in the city.

What mobility strategies are needed to strengthen social cohesion?

An important strategy is to consider mobility not just as an economic issue, but also as a social one. With this in mind, we also have some examples for people with disabilities or for the elderly and those on low incomes. We have a transportation-on-demand service that these groups can really rely on. It’s important that we continue to work for these people who need these mobility solutions.

I’ve just given the example of the transportation-on-demand service, but we also deploy shared mobility services. It’s important for us to provide assistance to these people so that they can take advantage of these mobility services, for example with discounts, because every individual should have the right to mobility.