How can rural communities embrace sustainable mobility?
On 6-7 February 2025, the Policy Learning Platform held an online peer review for the Leitrim County Council in Ireland, which has requested insight from other very thinly populated areas in Europe on their progress with sustainable mobility and community acceptance: what sustainable mobility options were successfully introduced in very thinly populated areas? What was the impact and who pays what?
How to secure ongoing and sustained community buy-in of new mobility offers? How to educate on the benefits of sustainable mobility to encourage greater uptake, and what type of promotions and incentives to use?
Alongside the Policy Learning Platform representatives, a group of experienced peers participated in the peer review, also including three EMBRACER partners: Dr Darren McAdam-O'Connell, The Environmental Forum / Cork Transport & Mobility Forum, Cork; Jorge Brito, Coimbra Region Intermunicipal Community; and Sérgio Caetano, Coimbra Region Intermunicipal Community.
Leitrim County Council has already trialled many different new sustainable forms of mobility in the past but without the desired community impact and without being able to find long-term funding or business models due to the low demand for any mobility option in the very thinly populated territory.
The peers all came from territories with similar challenges and provided relevant examples of successfully introduced new mobility solutions as well as recommendations to achieve community buy-in for these. Some key recommendations:
- Better flexible products, attractive hubs, better buses and trains
- Newly introduced mobility solutions need time to unfold their impact
- Economies of scale improve rural business cases
- Social business models for rural settings
- Community buy-in is the result of a mixture of measures
Find out more about the peer review and the recommendations.