The third volume of Cities in motion, titled 'A City for Whom?', boldly navigates the multifaceted landscape of urban mobility, challenging us to redefine the very essence of our cities.
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At its core, a city is a reflection of its people — a dynamic interplay of spaces that nurtures life, work, and communal flourishing. Yet, too often, our urban mobility architecture neglects the fundamental needs and aspirations of communities. As we launch into this edition, we ask a profound question: 'A city for whom?'
The challenges we face: A call to action
In addressing this critical question, we embark on a journey that unravels the historical oversights embedded in our urban fabric. From vast highways slicing through communities to minority groups underserved or omitted from public transport services, this issue confronts the stark realities. The toll of air pollution, claiming over 200,000 lives annually in Europe, prompts the query: are our cities truly for everyone? When almost 20,000 people lose their lives on European roads each year and a disproportionate share of urban space is dedicated to cars, leaving low-income households without car ownership, the question echoes louder.
The success of our aspirations for decarbonisation and decongestion hinges on addressing this fundamental question. While electrification, automation, and digitalisation may seem like technological panaceas, the hard truth is that sustainable mobility requires inclusivity. Without shaping a city around its people, we risk falling short of our targets. Technology alone cannot bridge the gap.
This edition brings hope to the forefront. Across our cities and regions, transformative changes are underway, showcasing that bold and decisive action can lead to a more inclusive urban future. Engaging with local concerns, championing evidence-based decision-making, and thinking creatively are central to this transformative process.
Hope on the horizon: A glimpse of transformation
This latest issue (Volume III) illustrates how transformation is not just conceivable but is already in progress. We delve into cutting-edge projects reframing mobility as a 'right,' pioneering a public transport revolution. The relentless march of data, digitalisation, and AI rapidly revolutionising transport services takes centre stage. We track the latest changes in Mobility as a Service (MaaS), micromobility, and the European Mobility Data Space. Exploring how public policy can harmonise these advancements with inclusion and accessibility agendas is a key focus.
This edition scrutinizes the future of active travel, building upon the European Cycling Declaration. How can we capitalise on progress, translating principles and commitments into tangible action? Interviews with leading academics, including Stefaan Walgrave from the University of Antwerp, Romit Chowdhury from Erasmus University College, and Dr Sara Candiracci from Arup, provide evidence-based assessments, debunking the myth that sustainable mobility doesn't win elections.
Much like the second volume, this edition brings you to the frontline of Europe's transport transformation. Europe's local decision-makers share lessons on reconciling discord and moving in the same direction. POLIS’ outgoing President, David Dessers, Leuven’s Deputy Mayor, and incoming President Lot van Hooijdonk from Utrecht unite to examine shared aspirations, ideas, and practical strategies for fostering more sustainable transport within their cities. Antwerp’s Deputy Mayor Koen Kennis outlines how far the city’s mobility landscape has come and what lies on the horizon.
Bridging two pillars: Just Transition and leadership for change
Volume III bridges two essential pillars of POLIS work: the Just Transition and leadership for change. Witness how these vital ingredients unite to support economic growth, climate objectives, social cohesion, and political unity. As we ponder the question 'A city for whom?', the resounding answer becomes 'A city for all'!
Read Cities in motion Volume III:'A city for whom?', HERE.
In preparation for the Annual POLIS Conference 2023, POLIS speaks with the Keynote Speaker of our Closing Plenary, Stefaan Walgrave, Professor of Political Science at the University of Antwerp, to exp...Read more
POLIS speaks to Koen Kennis, Vice Mayor of Antwerp and panellist for the Opening Plenary of our 2023 Annual Conference, about the future of sustainable mobility, and how a city renowned for being a lo...Read more
Mobilising shared mobility services for a more inclusive and accessible future? Providers are leading the way! In this article, we delve into interesting examples from industry leaders Lime, Uber, Nex...Read more
As the European Commission pushes forward with the revision of the trans-European Transport (TEN-T) Network Regulation, a transformative journey is underway to create a sustainable, efficient, and res...Read more
If cities and regions are to meet climate and modal shift targets, public transport needs to be front and centre; this is exactly what the UPPER project is on a mission to achieve!
To listen to the r...Read more
Cities, whether by chance or choice, often contribute to gender disparities. The city, and thus, its mobility, becomes the ground on which to negotiate the pulls between public and private values, wit...Read more
Recently launched by the European Commission at Urban Mobility Days, the EU Cycling Declaration signifies a higher-level commitment to boosting cycling in Europe. But what does this Declaration truly...Read more
Discover how user satisfaction is reshaping pedestrian indicators in Europe. The Walkability.App, a user-friendly tool gathering data to enhance urban walkability, shows how user-driven insights are t...Read more
Discover how Fifteen is reshaping the future of bike-sharing schemes, making them more accessible, sustainable, and user-friendly. Learn about their insights, innovative solutions, and global impact,...Read more
Explore how Turku, Finland, is revolutionising school travel to enhance children's well-being, learning capabilities, and environmental sustainability. Discover their holistic approach to foster cycli...Read more
Air pollution remains the number one environmental health risk in Europe, and the current lack of alignment between Europe’s air quality standards and emissions standards for road vehicles is a majo...Read more
We sat down with outgoing and incoming POLIS Presidents David Dessers, City of Leuven, and Lot van Hooijdonk, City of Utrecht to learn more about their mobility aspirations. From Utrecht's world-renow...Read more
Rotterdam has been at the forefront of sustainable city logistics for nearly a decade. Since the Green Deal City Logistics Rotterdam in 2014, the City has worked diligently towards the implementation...Read more
From self-driving cars to drone delivery services, advances in technology are changing the face of transportation. However, these advances also transform companies’ business models, affecting the ro...Read more
Discover how cities can enhance freight planning, reduce environmental impact, and harness the potential of innovative strategies like cargo bikes. Dr. Anne Goodchild shares insights from Seattle, exp...Read more
Cooperation between local authorities and the private sector will be essential for achieving climate neutrality targets. Baden-Württemberg reveals how they are encouraging employers and commercial ve...Read more
Uber shares insights on how to optimise charging infrastructure through the lens of ride-hailing. Data shows a startling gap between charging supply and demand, notably in suburban areas. Explore how...Read more
Cities and organisations in the United States and Europe explain their common vision for digitalised mobility, with concerns for efficiency, security, transparency, and standardisation in mind.
From...Read more
The past five decades have seen an upsurge in cycling in Amsterdam. As more and more residents have traded four wheels in for two, however, another trend has emerged: bike theft. With the annual value...Read more
Uncover the innovative safety technologies and approaches that set Voi apart in the dynamic world of micromobility. Explore how Voi collaborates with local authorities, harnesses data analytics, and e...Read more
Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) has the potential to deliver more sustainable, resilient and human-centric mobility for the world. Yet despite some encouraging progress, significant barriers remain. Base...Read more
Explore the concept of Data Spaces and their role in the European Mobility Data Space (EMDS), driving innovation, trust, and data sharing across sectors. Uncover the state of play of EMDS, its benefit...Read more
How to use the available area smartly to enable priority of public transport without building a new physical public transport lane? Viken County Council is working on a pilot project to answer this qu...Read more
Recent monitoring by Brussels Environment shows a decrease in key air pollutants in Brussels, and, for the first time, a reduction of up to 30% in NO₂ since 2018 along the city's main roads. What ex...
Amsterdam is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands. Located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country, it has an urban population of 1,209,419 and a metropolitan population...
The city of Antwerp is located in the northern part of Belgium. It is the second largest city in the country and Europe’s second largest port.
Its urban and port areas face a complex mobility sit...
Baden-Württemberg is a state located in the southwest of Germany bordering France and Switzerland. The region counts approximately 11.2 million inhabitants and it is the third-largest German state by...
Brussels Mobility is the public administration of the Brussels-Capital Region responsible for equipment, infrastructure and mobility issues. Its primary challenge is to facilitate economic development...
Budapest is the capital city of Hungary. With an estimated population of 1,752,286 over a land area of about 525 square kilometres, it is the 9th populous city in Europe; however, this size poses a se...
The Hellenic Institute of Transport (H.I.T.) is part of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) which is a non-profit organization that directly reports to the General Secretariat for Re...
The Flemish region, or Flanders, is the Dutch-speaking, northern part of Belgium. Despite being one of the most densely populated regions in the world, the region does not include big cities: in fact,...
Gothenburg is Sweden’s second largest city with approximately 590,000 inhabitants. As the biggest port in the Nordic Region, Gothenburg is by tradition a centre for trade, transport and industry but...
Ile-de-France Mobilités designs, organises and finances the public transport used by residents all across the Greater Paris Region.
Ile-de-France Mobilités brings together stakeholders from all o...
KU Leuven is the largest University in Belgium with its main campus located in Leuven and several campuses across Flanders. To foster interdisciplinary research, several subject-specific KU Leuven Ins...
Leuven is a dynamic and multicultural city in the Flemish region of Belgium, and the capital of the Flemish Brabant province. A dynamic and multicultural city, it shines because of its exemplary gover...
Lisbon is the capital of Portugal, with an area of 8.462ha and 550.000 inhabitants. Lisbon attracts daily an extra 360,000 persons that come to work or study in the city. The City is part of the Lisbo...
Madrid City is the core of a very populated metropolitan area that now boasts nearly 6 million inhabitants. The area is the subject of intense urban sprawl and decentralisation of production, commerci...
Mpact is a Belgian non-profit organisation focusing on shared mobility. They offer concrete mobility services like Carpool (ridesharing), Less Mobile Services (social transport for elderly people), Co...
The Open Mobility Foundation (OMF) is a nonprofit that develops open source tools for cities to manage mobility. Founded in 2019, the OMF brings together public and private sector stakeholders to unde...
The City of Paris experiences 6.6 million journeys each day; most of which are less than 3km, and 4 million of which are journeys between central and suburban Paris. This leads to problems of congesti...
RISE is Sweden’s research institute and innovation partner. Through their international collaboration programmes with industry, academia and the public sector, they ensure the competitiveness of the...
Since the early ‘90s Rome has been engaged in pursuing a strategy aimed at obtaining a rebalancing of modal split in favour of collective transport. This process has been certified since then by the...
Rotterdam, with about 600,000 inhabitants, is the largest and central main port for goods distribution in Europe and still has one of the largest ports in the world. Rotterdam started the Rotterdam Cl...
Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece and the capital of Regional Unity of Thessaloniki which comprises 14 municipalities.
Passenger transport in the Regional Unity of Thessaloniki is c...
Turku, with its surrounding municipalities, is an energetic centre of growth in the Baltic Sea area with approximately 200 000 inhabitants.
Turku was selected one of the EUs 100 mission cities whic...
Utrecht is the capital of the province of the same name. Together with the surrounding cities, the metropolitan area has about 600,000 inhabitants. Situated in the heart of the Netherlands, Utrecht is...
The province of Utrecht covers 144,915 hectares and includes 26 municipalities and almost 1.3 million inhabitants. The densely populated and centrally located province is a part of the Randstad, conur...
Viken County is Norway’s largest county with more than 1.2 million inhabitants. The county is located in the south-eastern part of Norway, surrounding the capital Oslo. Viken County is in charge of...
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Accessibility Statement
www.polisnetwork.eu
03/12/2024
Compliance status
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience,
regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level.
These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible
to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific
disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML,
adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Screen-reader and keyboard navigation
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with
screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive
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alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website.
In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels;
descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups),
and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag
for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology.
To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on
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These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
Disability profiles supported in our website
Epilepsy Safe Mode: this profile enables people with epilepsy to use the website safely by eliminating the risk of seizures that result from flashing or blinking animations and risky color combinations.
Visually Impaired Mode: this mode adjusts the website for the convenience of users with visual impairments such as Degrading Eyesight, Tunnel Vision, Cataract, Glaucoma, and others.
Cognitive Disability Mode: this mode provides different assistive options to help users with cognitive impairments such as Dyslexia, Autism, CVA, and others, to focus on the essential elements of the website more easily.
ADHD Friendly Mode: this mode helps users with ADHD and Neurodevelopmental disorders to read, browse, and focus on the main website elements more easily while significantly reducing distractions.
Blindness Mode: this mode configures the website to be compatible with screen-readers such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, and TalkBack. A screen-reader is software for blind users that is installed on a computer and smartphone, and websites must be compatible with it.
Keyboard Navigation Profile (Motor-Impaired): this profile enables motor-impaired persons to operate the website using the keyboard Tab, Shift+Tab, and the Enter keys. Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
Additional UI, design, and readability adjustments
Font adjustments – users, can increase and decrease its size, change its family (type), adjust the spacing, alignment, line height, and more.
Color adjustments – users can select various color contrast profiles such as light, dark, inverted, and monochrome. Additionally, users can swap color schemes of titles, texts, and backgrounds, with over seven different coloring options.
Animations – person with epilepsy can stop all running animations with the click of a button. Animations controlled by the interface include videos, GIFs, and CSS flashing transitions.
Content highlighting – users can choose to emphasize important elements such as links and titles. They can also choose to highlight focused or hovered elements only.
Audio muting – users with hearing devices may experience headaches or other issues due to automatic audio playing. This option lets users mute the entire website instantly.
Cognitive disorders – we utilize a search engine that is linked to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, allowing people with cognitive disorders to decipher meanings of phrases, initials, slang, and others.
Additional functions – we provide users the option to change cursor color and size, use a printing mode, enable a virtual keyboard, and many other functions.
Browser and assistive technology compatibility
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Notes, comments, and feedback
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to