Enrica Papa & Sabina Cioboata Research

Experimenting with City Streets to Transform Urban Mobility (EX-TRA)

Funded by Joint Programming Initiative, European Commission

Across Europe, cities are aiming to reduce their reliance on car-based mobility. Towards this goal, over the past three years the project EX-TRA has explored street experiments (or intentional but temporary changes in street use), regulation and design with the aim of accelerating or catalysing the transition to post-car cities. 

EX-TRA generated insights into the following:

  1. – combinations of physical design and regulation to increase diversity and inclusivity of uses and users in city streets; 
  2. – transport and land use conditions to enable walking and cycling accessibility in city districts; 
  3. – shared, micro-mobility and freight delivery options; 
  4. – strategies for change that can accelerate the transition towards a ‘post-car’ city.

The project examined and learned from transition experiments in six European cities: Amsterdam, Bologna, Milan, Ghent, Munich and London. Using a series of tools developed by EX-TRA, the cities experimented with temporary interventions to test new ideas, generate feedback from cities, and understand what works and what doesn’t in their respective contexts. The project produced a number of innovative tools:

  1. – StreetECHO: a platform for citizen engagement in street transformation processes, consisting of an online survey tool, a data visualisation tool, and a comprehensive protocol for community workshops. 
  2. – GOAT (Geo Open Accessibility Tool): which takes a data-driven approach to assessing the quality of accessibility by walking and cycling.
  3. – IAPI (Inclusive Accessibility by Proximity Index): which assesses how accessible essential services are to various user groups.
  4. – D4AMS (Dashboard for Alternative Mobility Scenarios): a modelling platform which enables policymakers to explore radical future scenarios involving street closures, bike-sharing and car-sharing.
  5. – Change Workshop Protocol and Conversation Starter Deck: two tools aimed at fostering knowledge sharing and the effective governance of street experiments.