Mobility in Eberswalde
As part of the EU-funded "E-Mobility Works" project, Eberswalde is one of three German model municipalities in which electromobility is to be promoted in order to serve as an example for other municipalities. This builds on Eberswalde's more than 75-year-old tradition of electric public transport.
Electromobility action plan
As part of the project, the city has "Electromobility action plan" which the city councillors approved for implementation in December 2015. This can be accessed on the city's website in the urban development section under the newly revised topic area of energy and climate protection. The action plan bundles measures from the five fields of action: vehicle fleet, e-vehicle sharing, charging infrastructure, legal/political framework and public relations. One particularly important goal is to get people who use vehicles with combustion engines in their everyday lives excited about electric mobility and thus raise public awareness of the issue.
The first measures to be implemented in the city are the development of public charging infrastructure for e-cars and e-bikes, the replacement of a petrol vehicle with an electric car for the city administration and an information event for companies with mobility needs. With the action plan, the city of Eberswalde is launching another measure of its adopted climate protection concept and is also supporting the German government's goal of putting one million electric cars on German roads by 2020.
Mobility in cities
The Transport Survey Mobility in Cities, founded in 1972 as the "System of Representative Transport Behaviour Surveys (SrV)", serves to determine the mobility characteristics of the urban resident population. On the one hand, important data bases for municipal transport planning are regularly updated and analysed on the basis of a uniform survey design. On the other hand, cross-city trends in transport development and their boundary conditions can be researched using large samples.
A few years ago, nobody would have associated the term mobility with transport. Today, however, both terms are used synonymously. However, both terms convey many different meanings.
The Mobilitythe term "mobilitas" goes back both to the French military language of the 18th cent. The term "mobility" can be traced back to the French military language of the 18th century (= mobile, ready to march) as well as to the Latin word "mobilitas" (mobility, speed). The concept of mobility is very multifaceted and always depends on the particular feature being analysed. Mobility is referred to individually in combination with self-determination, self-realisation and personal freedom.
Mobility is exclusively person-related and describes the potential or a realised change of location of individuals. The key parameter is the mobility rate (trips outside the home per person per day). The distance travelled by a person in one day is referred to as the mobility budget. The time required in this context (time expenditure) is called the mobility budget.
Transport comprises the movement between locations of people (passenger transport), goods (goods transport) and messages (message transport, communication) with the aim of overcoming space. Transport generally takes place on separate transport routes and with specific means of transport (with communication traffic occupying a special position). In addition, transport can be assigned to different categories, for example according to the mode of transport (mass or individual transport), distance (local and long-distance transport), function (commuter traffic, local recreation or holiday traffic) or mode of transport (road, rail, air and shipping).
Transport is related to territory and infrastructure and describes clearly definable and thus firmly defined changes in the location of people or goods. Traffic volume (person trips per unit of time in a defined area), traffic performance (passenger kilometres per unit of time in a defined area) and mileage (vehicle kilometres per unit of time in a defined area) can be used to operationalise traffic.
Since the needs side of mobility and the corresponding implementation side can be assigned to transport, it becomes clear that the two concepts (Mobility and transport) are difficult to separate from one another. The realisation of these needs as direct changes in location (distance, means of transport used) is influenced by a variety of factors.
Mobility and transport can be influenced both by the individual's choice of means of transport and, in particular, by a integrated transport development planning will have a lasting impact. This is the only way (among other things) that individual mobility needs and traffic flows can be organised in an urban-friendly way.