Experiences with Mobilna Gdynia after one year – Gdynia’s mobility platform for citizens
Within CIVITAS DYN@MO measure Mobility 2.0 Communication, City of Gdynia launched a special online platform dedicated to the transport and mobility issues called ‘Mobilna Gdynia’. It has been available to the citizens since February 2014 and some experiences can be shared after one year.
The concept for the platform was elaborated by the Gdansk University of Technology. The main aim was to create a tool, which would allow the city to communicate with the public and stakeholders more easily and on a wider scale, and to conduct consultations with local community, especially during transport planning and the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) elaboration process.
The city designed the website, not only to provide information, raise awareness and promote activities, but also to include citizens and stakeholders in the SUMP planning and decision making process, collect data and opinions for analysis and evaluation and involve people in the discussion. This was made possible through the use of social media and other web 2.0 tools integrated to the platform. These tools include: comment boxes, opinion polls and questionnaires published on the website, as well as microblog called ‘Moja Gdynia’. The last one allows users to create content by themselves, by adding articles, texts, opinions, interesting photos, videos or links to other websites.
During the existence of the platform more than 200 articles on different mobility topics have been published by Gdynia’s European Projects and Mobility Management Unit, the manager of the portal. The articles have been read almost 77,000 times by more than 22,000 users. At the same time with the establishment of the portal, a new city brand Gdynia Mobilna was created and it is being used in all promotional material linked to mobility issues.
The published articles cover a variety of topics from measures implemented in other cities, technological novelties and trends in the development of transport systems to local issues as well as the results of research and initiatives implemented among residents of Gdynia.
Each of the published articles was read by approx. 520 people. The most popular article was on ‘Research on preferences in traffic organization on Swietojanska Street’ with 9 123 views! Other popular topics have been (with more than 2000 readers) the Traffic Management System, Gdynia’s participation in European Cycling Challenge competition (G1.2 Community project studies from SUMP) and the results of local campaign ‘Bike to Work’. The portal is also being used to promote the CIVITAS DYN@MO activities. All project brochures and newsletters are available for download on the portal.
Parallel to the website, Gdynia has a Facebook fanpage called ‘Mobilna Gdynia‘ which is liked by more than 2,000 users.
Gdynia DYN@MO team is very pleased with the high interest towards local mobility issues among the citizens. It confirms that there is a need for public consultations on mobility activities and is a proof of the popularity of the activities and campaigns carried out by the city to promote sustainable transport. The City hopes that Mobilna Gdynia will attract further interest and continues to be an important source of information on transport and mobility in Gdynia as well as platform for citizens to share their own opinions and suggestions for mobility solutions.
