Our country is 'smarter'

In Milan, one of the major goals of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, developed by the Mobility and Environment Agency, consists of dealing with traffic issues in the city by reducing the number of vehicles clogging the streets on a daily basis. A year later, and the results are clear to see. The implementation of the idea of car pooling and improvements made to the public transport network has led to the number of motorized vehicles beginning to diminish. Nevertheless, the Italian city still heads the motorization rate table (507 cars per 1000 inhabitants), which includes some of the biggest European cities. Paris, for example, appears in eighth place, with a rate of around half that of Milan (250).

Sara Boccia, a member of the Milan Mobility and Environment Agency, visited Lisbon to present the project implemented in the Italian city, and admits that there is no specific model to follow and that the challenges are common to all countries today. The plan developed for Milan was designed for the next ten years and, as such, states Sara Boccia, “there´s still a lot to do”. The initiative is based on the four pillars consisting of mobility, equality, safety and social cohesion, in addition to improving the quality of the environment and innovation and economic efficiency.

Besides reducing the number of private vehicles on the city´s streets, the other goals of this strategy include improving mobility and reducing travelling costs, particularly for people who live outside the city but work in the centre. Hence, the Mobility and Environment Agency has been striving to promote the provision of pooled services for a number of years now, including car-sharing, bike-sharing and scooter-sharing. An idea put on paper that has become a reality in this Italian city. “There´s no need to buy a car now”, emphasises Sara Boccia. There are currently 34 shared cars in Milan, transporting 800,000 people a year. 26% of these vehicles are electric.

With regard to bicycle-sharing, citizens and visitors have 3650 traditional and 1000 electric bikes at their disposal, which can be picked up at 283 points around the city. An average of 57,000 users is registered per year.

Scooter-sharing is already a reality in this northern Italian city which, according to Sara Boccia, was the first in the country to provide this service. The city´s three operators provide 500 scooters for 28,000 current users, with a daily average of around 450 trips.

“The different countries are beginning to cooperate increasingly in order to meet the common challenges and this is the only way of creating and developing new solutions”

The strategic plan includes an incentive for shared electric cars, with a view to reducing the environmental impact and pollution levels in the city. The same applies to public transport with the introduction of an increasing number of buses run on alternative energy.

Finally, the creation of leisure zones and green areas that 'keep' the population in the city and enable them to make better use of public space are other priorities. “We strive to create new green areas and, therefore, we are turning abandoned places into gardens for the population to use as leisure zones”, underlines Sara Boccia.

PORTUGAL ON THE RIGHT PATH

Sara Boccia attended the “Sustainable Mobility: transition to the cities of the future” conference organised by the newspaper Público, where, in addition to the example of Milan, other initiatives were shared, some of them Portuguese, with a view to making life in cities more sustainable.

This sharing of experiences has led to the conclusion that Portugal is on the right path with regard to the preparation of the cities of the future, as we will be facing the same challenges and threats as our European partners. Moreover, as Sara Boccia declared, there is no specific model to be followed in Europe. What does exist are targets defined by the European Union (EU) that countries are required to meet. “The different countries are beginning to cooperate increasingly in order to meet the common challenges”, the Italian acknowledges. And this, in her opinion, “is the only way of creating and developing new solutions”.

Here in Portugal, the authorities´ projects designed to make cities more efficient and sustainable, sometimes poorly-disclosed, are progressing nicely. Interesting projects are being implemented from the north to the south of the country, transforming the day-to-day of our municipalities and turning them into good examples of smart cities. Lisbon, Oeiras, Porto and Bragança top the ranking of the 'smartest' cities in the country, according to the Portuguese Smart Cities Index 2015, which assesses 47 sustainability indicators in our towns and cities.