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Tampere explores ways to encourage greener, healthier mobility choices

The City of Tampere has launched a collaborative project to identify ways to encourage people to make mobility choices that are greener and healthier.

Laura Vanzo / Visit Tampere

The City of Tampere has launched a project that makes use of its mobility carbon footprint calculator to determine if drawing attention to the health benefits of incidental activity can motivate people to choose greener and healthier modes of mobility, such as cycling or walking.

The goal is also to determine which types of messages are effective at encouraging residents to get around more sustainably.

“We inspire citizens to use more sustainable transport and to contribute in achieving the city’s carbon neutrality goals,” summarised Laura Inha, programme manager at the City of Tampere.

The Tampere.Finland application provides information about climate impacts of mobility choices to more than a thousand monthly users. In addition, the app includes other useful services, such as wayfinding, public transport routes and timetables, available parking spaces, electronic library card, current issues of the city, event calendar, as well as the Tampere Discount Pass. Image: City of Tampere

The project uses the nearly one-year-old carbon footprint app to create a group of app users who receive information about the health effects of everyday activity, elaborated Lassi Ahlvik, associate professor at the University of Helsinki, and Anna Sahari, senior researcher at VATT Institute for Economic Research.

Anna Vilhula, project manager at the City of Tampere, said she hopes that as many residents as possible start using the app and provide data that is valuable not only for this research project, but also for traffic planning and urban development.

“An individual user cannot be identified from the data so using the calculator is safe,” she assured.

The public-private partnership is co-financed by the Ministry of the Environment under Sustainable City, a five-year (2019–2023) programme designed to accelerate the sustainable development of municipalities in Finland.

By: Aleksi Teivainen
03.05.2022