Abstract
Transportation has significant and long lasting economic, social and environmental impacts, making it one of the main challenges to be addressed by policy makers, public managers and scholars worldwide. For Universities, students and staff transportation represents one of the largest impacts on the environment and society, since in many cases it represent a noticeable share of urban traffic. A wide literature is available on the policies that support reducing car usage and improve the environmental and social sustainability of commuting to University. This paper presents the situation in the Politecnico di Milano, recorded through mobility surveys carried out in 2015 and 2017 to investigate the key issues and design possible solutions. The aim of this study is to share the set of actions and activities planned to improve the current mobility patterns of the Politecnico di Milano in favour of more sustainable means of transport. The main strategies will be the redesign of the campuses and the new infrastructure to be installed, together with the promotion of sustainable behaviours among the whole University population thanks to various activities in the framework of the ‘Città Studi Campus Sostenibile’ initiative. A special mention will be given to the ‘Vivi.Polimi’ project, which aims to improve the liveability of the Politecnico spaces, and which will give sustainable mobility a new impulse. Indeed, the planned measures include the reduction of the parking spaces inside the historical main campus while providing new infrastructure targeted at the promotion of alternative means of transport, like increasing the number of bike shelters to encourage active mobility or installing new charging stations for electric cars.
Highlights
Transportation has significant and long lasting economic, social and environmental impacts, making it one of the main challenges to be addressed by policy makers, public managers and scholars worldwide
The main strategies will be the redesign of the campuses and the new infrastructure to be installed, together with the promotion of sustainable behaviours among the whole University population thanks to various activities in the framework of the ‘Città Studi Campus Sostenibile’ initiative
Achieving sustainable mobility is a relevant contemporary goal, addressed worldwide by scholars, planners and policy-makers, because it is related to the high greenhouse gas emissions of transportation, and because it affects the quality of the living environment, e.g. in terms of air and noise pollution, and of lifestyles [1]
Summary
Achieving sustainable mobility is a relevant contemporary goal, addressed worldwide by scholars, planners and policy-makers, because it is related to the high greenhouse gas emissions of transportation, and because it affects the quality of the living environment, e.g. in terms of air and noise pollution, and of lifestyles [1]. Several studies have been developed by European Universities to identify the most effective mobility management policies to shift the modal choice to more sustainable alternatives [3] [4] [11] This kind of urban planning is still pretty new in Italy which means that Universities need to take a proactive role in fuelling the debate, contributing to the spreading of sustainable mobility with concrete actions. One of the main focuses of the mobility working group has been studying and promoting solutions aimed at reducing the modal share of private vehicles commuting to the Politecnico di Milano. The 2017 survey reached 59,140 people and gathered about 14,000 answers, yielding an overall response rate of 24% [13] Comparing this survey results with the previous ones, it was possible to note a slight modal shift (almost 10%) from private means of transport to public and nonmotorized ones [14], demonstrating a positive turn towards sustainable mobility habits. Active mobility, like walking, cycling and every other form of transport that only requires human physical activity for the locomotion, already represents a big part of the modal share for both categories but could be even higher
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