VENAMO: Reducing traffic congestion through new forms of work and mobility technologies

The VENAMO research project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and explores the question of the extent to which traffic relief effects can be achieved through spatial and temporal flexible work and a change in mobility behaviour for work-related travel (including the use of new mobility technologies).

The study area Stuttgart has been one of the most traffic-jammed cities in Germany for years. According to Inrix, the lost time per car driver in 2019 was around 42 hours per year, and the resulting costs for drivers and society were 85 million euros. External costs not included here, e.g. for consequential environmental damage.

As around 900,000 employees in the Stuttgart Region regularly commute to their place of work and 40% of the transport performance on a working day is caused by commuter traffic, a change in behaviour for work-related ways can make an important contribution to measurably less traffic and to more sustainable urban mobility in the Stuttgart Region.

The scientific objectives of the research project are defined as follows:

• Determine the potential for using more flexible forms of work in terms of space and time and sustainable mobility concepts.
• Develop and test alternative forms of work and mobility in real-life experiments with the affected employees.
• Determine the resulting traffic relief potentials in the Stuttgart Region and evaluate them socio-economically.
• Consolidate results in dialogue with representatives of regional companies as well as regional traffic management institutions and translate them into generally transferable instruments.

Based on the assumption of positive effects on traffic congestion, design options are developed for those who are responsible in companies, businesses and municipalities in order to implement sustainable mobility management.

The project network is coordinated by the Chair of Socioeconomics at Zeppelin University (ZU). In addition to ZIRIUS, the Institute of Transport (IfV) at the KIT and Balluff GmbH are also partners in the network. The network is supported by the WRS and the VRS.

In the research network, ZIRIUS implements real-life labs with employees in companies and local administrations and shapes the regional dialogue with key actors.