Five cities have tried out new ways of changing car drivers’ behavior for short car trips. They experimented with specific target groups that are in a life change moment and brought in ICT-tools, personalized travel planning and health arguments. The cities presented the first results of their campaigns at the SWITCH project meeting that took place on 1 & 2 December in Cologne. Gdansk and Hounslow both worked with primary schools and focused on the start of a new school year, involving not only the children but also teachers and parents in their campaigns. The ICT tools and games such as Beat the Street, Traffic Snake Game, EU cycling challenge were a big success to get people cycling and walking. But even more striking was that these technologies did not only have an impact on sustainable mobility, but also on the social contact in the community. The campaigns made people walk and talk together! Gdansk motivated over 4000 participants of 3 primary schools to walk and cycle more than 170.000 km in 30 days. In Hounslow, 36 primary schools and 11.000 people participated and walked 39.000 miles.

• Vienna had an amazing Year of Walking in 2015! The newly created Walking App was downloaded 12.000 times and counted almost 200 million steps. But also old school maps are still popular in all cities:  Vienna distributed 150.000 Cycling Maps and 80.000 Walking Maps since April. The SWITCH campaign was included in the Year of Walking and focused on people who moved house or received medical advice.

• Antwerp involved over 3.500 employees of workplaces to prepare them for big roadworks that are turning the city upside down. Yes, this is also a life changing moment! The results of the personalized travel planning approach in Antwerp are not finalized yet.

• Also in San Sebastian, where more than 3.000 people who recently moved to town were contacted, some parts of the campaign are still running.

These are only preliminary results, as SWITCH will also look into a detailed evaluation of the campaigns including cost-benefit analysis of different parts of the campaigns. So keep tuned to discover the results in other cities: check out the SWITCH website, register for the SWITCH newsletter and save the date to attend the final SWITCH conference to hear about the best recipes for success! Read more about the Final Conference.