Promoting sustainable shared mobility interconnected with public transport in European rural areas

SMARTA 2 – Demonstrators is a project funded by the European Union (EU) to test the benefits of shared mobility in rural areas. Over a period of 18 months, the project will support East Tyrol (Austria), Trikala (Greece), Águeda (Portugal) and the Brasov Metropolitan Area (Romania) in setting-up environmentally friendly and cost-efficient shared transport services. While the type of services offered in the above areas will vary, as do their geographies, populations and mobility challenges, all the pilots will be assessed under a common evaluation framework. This includes several quantitative metrics, to learn what works in mobility in rural areas, and qualitative analyses, to unpack the story behind the numbers.

The SMARTA project was launched in 2018 to analyse the rural mobility landscape in Europe, identify smart transport solutions and good mobility practices, and create an evaluation framework to assess their performance and transferability potential. SMARTA 2 puts this evaluation framework into practice. The objective is to create an evidence base that will allow the extrapolation of the pilot-area findings to other rural settings across the EU.