European Mobility Week is the European Commission’s flagship awareness-raising campaign on sustainable urban mobility which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2021. It promotes behavioural change in favour of active mobility, public transport, and other clean, intelligent transport solutions. As every year, also in 2021, the event took place from 16 to 22 September. This is the week when local authorities are encouraged to try out innovative planning measures, promote new infrastructure and technologies, measure air quality, and get feedback from the public. With more towns and cities joining each year, the campaign continues to drive Europe, and beyond, toward sustainable urban mobility.

The SABRINA project joined the European Mobility Week in one of our project partners’ hometowns – in Ilirska Bistrica, Slovenia. Together with the local Tourist Information Center the SABRINA project partner Municipality Ilirska Bistrica organized different activities to encourage the locals for a healthy way of living and bigger sustainable mobility. The initiator of the European Mobility Week in Ilirska Bistrica was Boštjan Primc from the Municipality who said the programme was implemented under the slogan “Live healthily. Travel sustainably”.

While taking part in different activities, the visitors of the European Mobility Week in Ilirska Bistrica could get familiar also with different Interreg projects. For visitors to recognize the difference between poor and good cycling infrastructure, the SABRINA project team from Ilirska Bistrica showed them some good and bad examples of cycling infrastructure from project partner countries based on photographs. During the conversation, the activities carried out within the project were presented, focusing on the EuroVelo routes’ safety inspections, including the missing link between Trieste and Rijeka, that took place in Slovenia in July. Besides, the local SABRINA team presented the importance of the trainings organized in cooperation with the European Cyclists’ Federation and International Road Assessment Programme and the purpose of developing Safer Cycling Routes Toolkit.

In addition to the SABRINA project, two other Interreg projects were presented to the residents of Ilirska Bistrica and its surroundings as part of the European Mobility Week. The CROSSMOBY project (Interreg Italia–Slovenia) also contributes to sustainable mobility. “With the CROSSMOBY project, we strive for cross-border integrated transport planning and intermodal passenger transport services. As part of the project, we have introduced a city bus and the rental of electric bicycles, with which it is easier to overcome greater distances and varied terrain," said Simon Jenko from the municipality. Both projects have been joined by the D-CARE project (Interreg Danube), which focuses on smart care for people over 55 years of age. Petra Sanković from the municipality added that "the purpose of the project is to support social innovation, improve competencies and entrepreneurship in the field of smart care and health."

The European Mobility Week 2021 enjoyed enormous success on the European level, with 3,184 towns and cities registering their participation for the main event from 16 to 22 September. In addition, 645 mobility actions were registered by schools, non-governmental organizations, businesses, cities and other organisations throughout the year. Four of these have been selected as finalists for the title of Best Mobility Action 2021. The winner was announced at the end of December: the Best Mobility Action 2021 is Bologna 30. Inspired by peers in Paris, Brussels, Geneva, Helsinki and beyond, 30logna, or Bologna30, is a citizen-driven initiative that collects scientific evidence, data, statistics and best practices from across Europe to create awareness surrounding the dangers of inner-city traffic and to support a petition to the new mayor of Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy to make the university city adopt a 30 km/h limit.

Photo 1: Municipality Ilirska Bistrica
Photo 2: Tourist Information Center Ilirska Bistrica