Financial and social impacts of mobility hubs

Municipalities struggle with issues of mobility and parking. How do you ensure that your city or village remains accessible, while at the same time not compromising the living environment? We are increasingly seeing the mobility hub as a solution to this.

A mobility hub can serve several purposes:

• Bundling passenger flows for public transportation in rural areas;
• Capturing car traffic at the city outskirts
• Using space efficiently by accommodating multiple functions in one building. The traditional parking garage simultaneously becomes an attractive location with smart mobility solutions.
• Depending on the combination of functions, the mobility hub can produce a wide range of effects: Not only financial effects, but also social effects on accessibility, livability, area development and spatial quality.

Substantiation of mobility hubs
Ecorys recently examined the substantiation of several mobility hubs. First, the parking needs were clarified. Based on this, we made a translation to the parking operation, the social effects and/or the possibilities of financing the property. Below we briefly describe two example projects.

Example area Arenapoort
For the ArenaPoort area, the municipality of Amsterdam is looking for an efficient solution for various parking functions (parking for offices, events, P&R, cabs and coaches). With these parking functions, the municipality also wants to offer partial mobility, and the desire is to realize the hub close to public transportation. There will also be social and commercial facilities in the hub and sports facilities on the roof. This combination of functions will free up space for area development and the hub will contribute to the livability and social safety of the area. The City of Amsterdam needed insight into the social effects to be expected from this hub, in addition to purely financial effects on parking operations. Ecorys made an analysis of accessibility effects, livability effects and effects on spatial quality. In this way, the social added value of the hub was substantiated. Based on this analysis, we also supported the municipality in the search for possibilities to finance the hub.

Example mobility hub Buiksloterham
Ecorys prepared the parking operation for the Buiksloterham mobility hub in Amsterdam. The mobility hub should provide mobility solutions for residents. It also aims to minimize car traffic in the area by clustering parking facilities for visitors centrally. For this project, we worked with Movares, which estimated the parking needs and investment costs. Ecorys then prepared the parking operation. We also advised the municipality on partial solutions for mobility in the area. We made an analysis of the expected use and preconditions.

Would you also like insight into the effects of possible mobility hubs in your municipality? Then contact Mick Klaasens or Boyd Bergsma.