Winner city: Bologna
Having created an innovative cycling challenge that connects communities in surrounding cities to stimulate cycling, Bologna has effectively adopted one of the greenest modes of transportation worldwide. This interactive and highly participatory project has gone beyond the city limits of Bologna in spreading the benefits of cycling, using new media channels to connect communities in no less than ten different cities within its region. In second place is the city of Gdynia in Poland, which has created a joint scheme that involves the public in encouraging walking to school. In parallel, in third place, CIVITAS recognised the town of Aranjuez for launching a challenging yet successful forum for mobility, providing citizens the opportunity to participate in furthering sustainable urban transport on a grand policymaking scale.
Winner city: Funchal
Armed with a comprehensive, long-term approach for sustainable urban transport, the city of Funchal has integrated the bus and bike system to make the city more cycle friendly. Funchal has also launched a tourist kit to promote its green transport initiatives and render its historic city more attractive to tourists, setting an example to visitors from the rest of the world. There were two second runners-up within this category, Italy's Bologna and the UK's Brighton & Hove, with the latter having proved its ability to maintain momentum regarding sustainable transport beyond the measures introduced in CIVITAS. In third place are Denmark's Aalborg and Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain's Basque region, both being key cities that have worked diligently for advancing green transport options.
Winner city: Nantes
The city of Nantes has revolutionised its ticket fare structure with a smart card system, encouraging the use of public transport for everybody, and particularly for occasional users. It has also shown great stakeholder involvement in the project and has managed to integrate different transport services seamlessly. In the second place is the city of Sabadell in Spain which has implemented its Gran Via project, creating a combined smart traffic control system. Also noteworthy in third place is the city of Kocaeli in Turkey which has introduced dynamic new tools to improve the quality of public transport and make the lives of its citizens easier.
