Share North
Taxistop – Shared Mobility, Transnational Cooperation and Events that Rock!
How did Taxistop get involved with SHARE-North?
Taxistop first began expanding their area of expertise of sustainable shared mobility through the European Intelligent Energy Europe project Momo Car-Sharing. From there, they made the connection with the City of Bremen from their expertise on car-sharing through the Interreg North Sea Region project CARE-North. So the City of Bremen and Taxistop have worked together for a number of years to influence the public and establish sustainable mobility solutions through a number of projects, including SHARE-North.
What can Taxistop offer to the consortium?
For nearly 40 years, Taxistop has been offering a variety of shared mobility services to respond to people’s transportation needs and offers viable solutions to save people time and money. In particular, Taxistop is the operator of various sharing initiatives, including car-sharing and ride-sharing. Additionally, Taxistop acts as a sustainable shared mobility liaison between local government and the media throughout Belgium. With this in mind, Taxistop shares its extensive expertise within the consortium. Considering that the nature of the project encourages collaborating transnationally with an array of NGOs and private businesses, this variety offers each project partner the chance to learn skills and share a broad range of unique expertise. In all, Taxistop considers this balance of industry critical to the success of SHARE-North.
What does Taxistop hope to accomplish with the recent SHARE-North extension (an additional 2,5 years on top of the original project lifetime)?
Taxistop is looking forward to continuing to collaborate with SHARE-North partners to bring sustainable shared mobility solutions to the European Union. Most notably, the project extension helps the organisation continue their development efforts of mobihubs in Flanders and is actively inspiring other regions to follow suit. Moreover, the extension also allows Taxistop to learn from other country’s sustainable transport campaigns, such as SEStran’s carpool initiatives.
How has Taxistop benefitted from working transnationally while being part of the project?
Being a European Union Interreg project, SHARE-North brings together a strong mix of organisations and businesses from a variety of different backgrounds to solve some of the most challenging mobility issues. More specifically, Taxistop has recently been inspired by project partner Advier and their role within the Dutch New Green Deal, as well as learning from the German city of Bremen and the Norwegian city of Bergen and their efforts with mobihubs also known as mobilpunkte.
What have been some highlights of being part of the project?
Inspired by project partner Advier’s role with the Dutch New Green Deal, Taxistop, along with other mobility-focused organisations, co-created the Green Deal Shared Mobility with the Flemish government to further advance the growth of sustainable shared mobility. Another highlight has been the opening of the first Norwegian mobihub in Bergen, as well as the two Mobihub Academies that have taken place in the city. The Mobihub Academies are basically training sessions based on the experiences of Bergen and Bremen on how to successfully implement mobihubs. From these actions, Taxistop has forged connections and learned from partners, which in turn, strengthens their role within the SHARE-North project group.
What’s been the reaction to sustainable shared mobility in Belgium? In your city?
We view Belgium’s reaction towards sustainable shared mobility as very positive, noting that the country has been interested in mobihubs, in particular. We also have the goal to have 1,000 mobihubs in Flanders by 2025 and major Belgian political parties have also integrated mobihubs into their programmes. Simply stated, I would say, “the Flemish government believes in our objective.”
Any other exciting news or projects that you’d like to share?
Taxistop is looking forward to our annual Shared Mobility Rocks event, which we organise together with Autodelen.net. This year it will take place in Brussels on October 8, 2019! This international symposium on shared mobility is the chance to learn about the future of mobility from industry leaders, network, and be inspired to promote shared mobility in your own city. Several of the other SHARE-North partners will also be contributing to this event! For more information, please visit: www.shared-mobility.rocks
More information regarding Taxistop can be found on their website at: www.taxistop.be