Montserrat MIRAMONTES

Biographical note
Montserrat Miramontes graduated from the international study program in Environmental Engineering at the Technical University Munich. She works at the Chair of Urban Structure and Transport Planning of the same university since 2012. There she teaches on modelling of transport related emissions and transportation demand management. Her focus area is the assessment of sustainable transport strategies. She currently acts as Local Evaluation Manager in the framework of the European project ECCENTRIC and is in charge of the evaluation of ten sustainable mobility projects in the City of Munich. In addition she is doing a doctoral dissertation on multimodal mobility services.

Presentation: How to enable Munich’s Freedom (from private cars)? Impacts of a multimodal mobility service on travel behavior and preferences: User insights from Munich’s first Mobility Station.

In recent years, with the advances of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as well as innovations in vehicle technology, new forms of mobility such as modern free-floating carsharing and bikesharing systems have emerged. Furthermore, a gradual change in the consumption culture towards more using and less owning, and the sharing economy supported by internet platforms and smartphone applications enable other modes of transport to be attractive alternatives to private cars for daily mobility.
The City of Munich, in cooperation with the local public transport provider (MVG) is testing a pilot project of a Mobility Station (multimodal mobility hub connecting public transport and new shared mobility services) since November 2014. The project’s goal is to provide sustainable mobility options that allow citizens to be mobile without owning a car.
This multimodal transport node facilitates intermodal changes by providing close proximity of different mobility services. In addition to the existing public transport offer (metro, tram and buses) and a taxi stand, the Mobility Station at the “Münchner Freiheit” provides six parking places reserved for carsharing vehicles of three different companies, including a charging point for electric carsharing vehicles, and one MVG Rad (bikesharing) station with 20 docks. Moreover, information on-site and marketing from the different stakeholders attract users and encourage the use of the different alternatives. In order to decide whether or not to invest in additional Mobility Stations, and if so in which form, the main stakeholders are seeking to understand the public perception and acceptance of the pilot project as well as its impacts on mobility behavior and car ownership.
The Chair of Urban Structure and Transport Planning at the Technical University of Munich is carrying out the evaluation of this Mobility Station on behalf of the Department of Public Order (DPO) of the City of Munich and MVG.
With this contribution, we aim to present the results of a user survey conducted in June and July 2016, which forms an essential part of the evaluation.
Over 600 users of three types of mobility services participated in this questionnaire. We concentrate our analysis on the two most represented groups: MVG Rad (Bikesharing) users (72%) and FFCS (freefloating carsharing) users (24%).
Most users are young, male, and highly educated individuals with access to multiple mobility options. The demographic characteristics of the sample are very similar to those of the 2015 survey of carsharing users in Munich [2] which in part validates our results.
Public Transport plays a central role for more than 70% of users who declared to use this mode at least once a week. Most users might still be using only the mobility service that they were identified to be customers of (in addition to public transport) with a weekly frequency. However, the high share of bikesharing and FFCS users that use different mobility services more than once a month indicates some degree of multimodality among the users.
Actual and potential changes in mobility behavior towards multimodality were revealed. Users of the sharing mobility offers indicated that they became clients of other mobility services because they became aware of them through the Mobility Station and that since they use the Mobility Station, they use other mobility services more often. They appreciate the availability of different mobility options and show interest in other services and intermodal connections indicating that there is still potential to increase multimodal behavior. Based on previous findings multimodality can contribute to reduce car use and car ownership.
About a third of the respondents learnt about the Mobility Station by chance while walking past. Walking is also one of the most frequently used modes to reach the station before starting a rental and to reach a destination after ending a rental. This highlights the importance of the physical presence of a multimodal offer in public space and the quality of the urban environment.
The majority of respondents show interest in having more mobility stations at other public transport nodes, and in residential areas. The possibility to use alternative fueled vehicles (electric carsharing), seems to be an important factor for the users and should be included in other mobility stations.
The user’s survey was developed in close cooperation with the stakeholders and experts in the field of sharing mobility. It underwent many corrections and tests until we could have a final version. The incentive in value of 10€ provided to the users in the form of credit proved to be successful in achieving a high response rate (above 60%). The time invested in the development of the questionnaire proved to be worthy since the results obtained so far are providing important insights on the awareness and perception of the Mobility Station as well as actual and potential changes on mobility behavior towards multimodality.