Following the European Commission's Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy to transform the mobility system based in fossil energy consumption and private motorization to zero emission, vehicles must be coherently pursued and accelerated, in a context in which walking, cycling, and use of collective means of transport (trains, buses, trams etc.) should be encouraged and favored. Nevertheless, pandemic has been a negative factor to achieve these goals as it has pushed people to use individual transport based on car to avoid social contact. Due to many different factors (circulation of obsolete transportation means; lack of sustainable mobility planning capacity; scarcity of data, e.g., on air quality in many IPA countries, as revealed by SMILE’s surveys), many ADRION regions/cities are hotspots for the above-described problems. 

In such context, SMILE PLUS, as a follow-up of SMILE first project, intends to update and spread the main tool resulting from SMILE, namely the mobility scenarios as support to new transport policies in congested urban areas. The total value of the project is EUR 161,381.40, with EU co-financing of EUR 135,246.40 through the European Regional Development Fund and EUR 26,135.00 through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance. 

Once more, the cooperation between European institutions and regional development agencies, in this occasion, our member, DURA, is giving the opportunity to Croatia’s regions to improve and accelerate the development of DURA’s region conditions focused on green transition in mobility field. 

If you want to find out the SMILE PLUS project programme, click here. You can also read the whole news here.