The three chosen regions of the Smart Commuting project are large travel-to-work areas with the need for new services and concepts developed by the project partners. Despite the differences in the characteristics of these areas, the development of intelligent transport systems is at the same stage in these countries. These similarities make it possible to implement new mobility services, get experiences about the needs of users and discover some common ground for governance and city planning policies.
The district of Korneuburg in Austria, just North of Vienna, was chosen as an example of an area where people mostly commute by car despite an existing, well-working public transport offer. This is also the area, where ISTmobil started its operations providing on-demand based rides that are a part of the public transport.
The Growth Corridor Finland (GCF) is a cooperation network and a transition platform consisting of 20 municipalities and cities. As a geographical area, GCF stretches from Helsinki to Tampere as a string of cities, but also the city of Seinäjoki (connected by railroad to the GCF) is represented in this collaboration network. It forms the forefront basis of national competitiveness; more than 50 % of Finland’s GDP is produced in this area. In addition, GCF is the biggest pool of workforce in Finland with more than 350 000 daily commuters.
The metropolitan area of Basel, one of the five largest city areas in Switzerland, spans geographically to three different countries and has approximately 830,000 inhabitants, with 60% in Switzerland, 30% in Germany and 10% in France. Around 100 000 commuters come from surrounding areas to work in Basel city and of those 36 000 are cross-border commuters. Many of these commuters use bicycles or public transport. The experience of Basel is considered to be a testament of the ability of the multinational actors to overcome the inherent territorial complexity of cross-border cooperation – which in Basel brings together three countries, including four Swiss cantons, with significant legal and regulatory differences, and even EU border as an additional complexity. One part of the experience is good cooperation on a higher political level but also activities in developing joint public services for the whole area. One example of these is a tri-national cross-border public transport running since 1997.