PRESS RELEASE: The GEMINI Project “Greening European Mobility through cascading innovation Initiatives” has had its official kick-off meeting on 28th – 29th June in Potsdam (D). GEMINI aims at accelerating the progress towards climate neutrality through the demonstration and uptake of new shared mobility services, active transport modes, and micro-mobility and their integration with public transport in the new generation of Mobility as a Service (MaaS).
GEMINI is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe Program with a total budget of over 12 M€. The Consortium involves 43 partners led by the Urban Electric Mobility Initiative (UEMI).
Eight mission cities
In its 42 months duration, GEMINI will develop and test sustainable business models for New Mobility Services (NMS). This includes shared connected automated vehicles, shared mobility public transport, and public-private partnerships to increase shared mobility (MaaS and MaaC (Mobility as a Commons)) solutions for enterprises, families and tourists.
8 New Mobility Services will be co-designed, deployed and tested by Mobility Living Labs (MLLs) in 8 mission cities. These are Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Munich, Paris, Porto, and Turin. The MLLs will engage local communities in the co-creation, development and adaption of promising innovative mobility solutions with significant impact, accounting for user acceptance, sustainability and financial viability.
Digital enablers
GEMINI will structure the path from business scenarios to upscaled NMS business ventures. It will do so by building an Open Innovation Ecosystem to strengthen cooperation among stakeholders, setting the foundations for establishing public–private partnerships (PPP), mobility hubs, open mobility dataspaces and highly integrated MaaS systems.
To this purpose, the project will implement digital enablers such as collaboration platforms and multimodal MaaS solutions, and a data-driven mobility intelligence platform (AI4BI) to support cities in monitoring, regulating, and optimising shared mobility adapted to local needs.
Smart Innovation Norway’s main role is to make the engagement strategy for stakeholders and integrate with NMS Social Innovation practices towards incentivising behavioural shift and user acceptance.
We will also be creating policy recommendations to enable scale-up and replicability of the delivered results in the elaboration and implementation of SUMPs (Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning) frameworks and contribute to the CIVITAS impact assessment framework.
CIVITAS is one of the flagship programmes helping the European Commission achieve its ambitious mobility and transport goals and, in turn, those in the European Green Deal.
It does this by acting as a network of cities, for cities, dedicated to sustainable urban mobility. Through peer exchange, networking and training, CIVITAS fosters political commitment and boosts collective expertise, equipping cities to put mobility at the centre of decarbonisation.
Addresses key urban challenges
Project Officer is Mrs Marjolein Salens from the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA), and Policy Officer is Rafal Stanecki from the Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE) of the European Commission. According to them, the GEMINI project is expected to test and validate shared mobility services in mobility management. This is to address key urban challenges such as climate change, air quality, road safety, social inclusion and accessibility.
The Project Coordinator, Prof. Dr Oliver Lah, Managing Director at the Urban Electric Mobility Initiative (UEMI), emphasized that the GEMINI Living Lab aim to deliver new and shared mobility services that are both scalable within the Living Lab cities and replicable across Europe and beyond.
Aims for a 25 % increase
Each Mobility Living Lab will demonstrate a reduction of congestion, air pollution and road risk whilst fostering accessibility and social inclusion, targeting an increased share of NMS in the modal distribution at least by 25% compared to the baseline, measured at the start of the project.
GEMINI will liaise with the CIVITAS initiative and Mission Cities umbrella to deliver a comprehensive policy package to guide and incentivise future mobility solutions.
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