European Mobility Week 2024

Published: 28 Aug, 2024

European Mobility Week is the European Commission’s annual awareness-raising campaign on sustainable urban mobility. Taking place between 16-22 September of each year, the initiative is designed to support community, institutional and individual behaviour change with relation to active travel, mobility, public transport, and other clean, intelligent transport solutions.

Shared public space  

The theme for European Mobility Week 2024 is 'Shared Public Space'. In 2024, over 70% of Europeans are living in urban areas, placing pressure on the demand for public space. Supporting all people to walk, wheel, cycle and take public transport will make for healthier, more livable and more sustainable cities and communities - but to achieve this communities, researchers, public authorities and policy makers must work together ensure people-centred infrastructure and sustainable traffic initiatives is implemented.

Why travel sustainably?

By travelling to campus sustainably students, staff, and the surrounding communities have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of better air quality, improved quality of urban life, and a safer environment around the campus.

Try a new sustainable travel mode this European Mobility Week

TU Dublin is well connected by public transport links including Dublin Bus, LUAS, DART, and Iarnród Éireann train services with linkages to walk and cycle to campus. TU Dublin has over 2200 bike parking spaces, seven new bike maintenance stands and has shower and changing facilities within all campus locations. For more information on campus-specific transport and mobility services at TU Dublin, visit our Campus & Estates Travel page.

Taking place in September, the Sport & Societies Festival, is a great time for students to learn about sustainable and active travel to, and within, campus. Visit the Sustainability Hub at the Sport & Societies Festival in September and talk to TU Dublin Smarter Travel Coordinators your commute to TU Dublin. Check out the Smarter Travel programme of events and get involved in an active travel challenge this semester.

CRAWL

TU Dublin's strategic research project 'CRAWL' is funded under the Science Foundation Ireland’s (SFI) National Challenge Fund Sustainable Communities Challenge and supported by the Office of the Planning Regulator as the Societal Impact Champion. The project aims to engage TU Dublin’s community and campus stakeholders in order to understand barriers and provide opportunities to make campuses and their surrounding neighbourhoods more walkable and liveable.

Since the 1960s, development patterns changed to a more suburban car-based approach for street and neighbourhood design. As we moved to this more suburban design, our university campuses followed suit and now we have challenges that include the physical and social health of students, and transport poverty (financial costs and time costs) due to long commute times and limited public transport options for travelling to campuses. Finding opportunities to improve suburban campuses can have transferability of good practice to other suburban campus settings including employment and healthcare.

Using TU Dublin’s campus locations as a testbed, the CRAWL research team draws upon the expertise of an already established multidisciplinary national advisory committee on walking and liveable communities to work with campus communities, local authorities and stakeholders from surrounding neighbourhoods to create action research programme to increase the walkability and liveability of the campus neighbourhoods.