Scottish Rural and Islands Transport Community (SIRTC) BYOC Cafe MAMBA and SMARTA Friday 29 January 2021

MAMBA stands for MAximising Mobility and Accessibility of Services in Rural areas around the Baltic Sea region. Hakan Uraz explained that 15 municipal and academic partners from Poland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Latvia have supported the MAMBA programme of 20 projects. A transport on demand one in Latvia was well received but had a shaky political commitment, however legislation has now been changed to provide for such services. Cuxhaven has had village car-sharing, with a voluntary driver pool, and there has been electric carsharing in Slesvig-Holstein. Guides have been produced to collaborative mobility solutions, to mobility for all and to maximising mobility and access to services in rural areas.

Bruno of Smarta acknowledged that their pilots of ring a ride, carshare and digitalisation have had a minor impact. The objective was to combat car use with community-building, and the real challenge was to make people who had a car use it less. Hubs with services could promote "people traffic", aiding social interaction. Covoiturage has organised hitch-hiking in Belgium. Asset-sharing of cars or bikes is not viable without a sponsor, but ride-sharing is viable if people feel confident. Digitalisation is maybe not appropriate for occasional car-sharing.

Prof Laurie Pickup, director of Vectos said that collaborative mobility must take account of villages' shapes, and must cocreate with residents. visitors and migrant workers.

In the post-CoVid world, sharing of data between government and operators will be crucial to developing responsive services notwithstanding the data protection legislation. We need to move from predict and provide to vision and validation. Politically in the Loch Lomond National Park it's all about maximising income from visitors, managing capacity issues for cars. There needs to be support from employers and development of tourist services that can also convey locals.

Notes by John Yellowlees