More mobility for rural areas

Anyone who lives in rural areas knows the problem: rail connections are increasingly thin on the ground, bus connections are sporadic at best, and without a car of your own, it is often difficult to reach destinations further away.

There are many ideas for improving mobility in rural areas: From so-called "ride sharing," i.e., arranging rides via a carpooling service, to various loaner vehicles, to promoting local public transportation. In order to test these ideas in a real-life environment, a total of 41 projects have been selected for funding over a three-year period as part of the federal rural development program. Under the umbrella term "LandMobil - jointly on the move in rural areas", the selected projects are given the opportunity to test their ideas for feasibility.

The University of Kassel is also on board - the Department of Transport Planning and Systems (headed by Prof. Dr. Carsten Sommer), together with the German Institute of Urban Affairs, will provide intensive support and evaluation for the individual projects. "The expert monitoring and evaluation of the LandMobil projects serves to gain knowledge about the effects of the individual measures as well as about promoting and inhibiting factors during the trials," describes Dr. Melanie Herget, who will supervise the project in the department. "With the help of event and exchange formats between the individual projects, we want to promote synergy effects so that in the end we can make joint recommendations for policy-making," she explains further.

The client is the Competence Center for Rural Development (KomLE) of the Federal Agency for Food and Agriculture (BLE) with close ties to the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture. The "LandMobil" funding measure started in mid-2020 and is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2023. Up to 180,000 euros are available for each of the individual projects over the project period. A total of 450,000 in funding is available for accompanying research by the University of Kassel.

Some example projects:

• A flexible on-call bus in Swabia is also taking over deliveries of goods from regionally based farms on a test basis. This combines direct marketing and address-specific pick-up and delivery services.
• A commuter parking lot on highway 24 in the Ludwigslust-Parchim district is being developed into a rural mobility center. A ride-sharing station in four cardinal directions, a charging and rental station for electromobility - e-cars and e-bikes or pedelecs - and a digital information pillar will be set up there. Residents of the region can use a mobility app to access supra-regional ride-sharing services in addition to local ride-sharing services. Volunteer mobility officers provide advice to users in the surrounding villages.
• Together with the local population, a mobility network with public and private partners is being developed and tested in the Thuringian Rhön. This involves combining public transportation and ride-sharing services. A cross-border restructuring of the public transport network is also planned so that in the future, timetables can be coordinated across the states and joint tickets, transitional fares and new mobility solutions can be created in the border region of the states of Thuringia, Hesse and Bavaria.

Contact

Dr.-Ing. Melanie Herget
Department of Transportation Planning and Systems

Phone: +49(0)561-804-7199
E-mail: m.herget[at]uni-kassel[dot]de

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Carsten Sommer
Department of Transportation Planning and Systems

Tel.: +49(0)561/804-3381
E-Mail: c.sommer[at]uni-kassel[dot]de

Internet: http://www.uni-kassel.de/go/vpvs