34 • Te x t Robert Niessen • 35
ZUIDAS MOBILITY
EXPERIENCE
SUCCESSFUL!
MOBILITYLeaving your wheels at home to commute by public
transport for an entire month... Would you take
on this challenge? Over the month of September,
the Zuidas Mobility Experience did just that,
daring Zuidas professionals to forego driving for
the duration of one month and to opt instead for
a range of other ways of transport. This Mobility
Challenge, which is collaboration between Arcadis
and the municipality of Amsterdam, was part of
the wider MA AS (Mobility as a Service) project
between these partners. The Green Business Club
is among the initiators.FINDING NEW WAYS TO COMMUTE
Unabated growth of the Amsterdam metro region,
as well as the current development of Zuidasdok
(including construction of additional lanes and a
tunnel for the A10 south motorway and expansion of
Amsterdam Zuid station), have led to a fast growing
traffic congestion around Zuidas. In future, people
will have to find new ways to commute. Mobility as a
Ser vice (MAAS) could be the answer to this problem.
In essence, this broad concept seeks to replace
ownership of a personal vehicle with a wide range of
mobility options, comparable to developments such as
Netflix and Spotify in film and music. Experiences with
MAAS elsewhere show that the key to its success lies
in user convenience. Travellers have to be guaranteed
easy access to a comprehensive set of mobility
ser vices that meet their specific transport needs.CORPOR ATE ZUIDAS
CONTRIBUTING
Apart from the municipality, employers in Zuidas
also have a stake in maintaining the accessibility
of the area. Now businesses and the municipalauthorities are collaborating on initiatives to achieve
this goal. Arcadis is also taking a keen interest in the
transformations that are reshaping Zuidas, which is
‘literally in our backyard’, as Arcadis project leader
Joost de Jong explains. ‘We’re eager to contribute
our knowledge and experience of traffic and mobility
to help design and test concepts for MAAS. At
Arcadis, we consider Mobility as a Ser vice to be a
genuinely crucial development.’EXPERIENCES
In all, 11 commuters, representing diverse companies
and organizations in Zuidas, including Loyens & Loeff,
ABN AMRO, OVG, Deloitte and VUmc, accepted the
Mobility Challenge. A majority of them reported to
have had a positive experience with the pilot. Peter
Alles, RPA consultant (Robotics Process Automation)
at Deloitte, commented on the challenge, saying, ‘For
my job I have to travel to lots of different locations, and
sometimes I have to make several appointments within
the same day. Getting around without a car is tricky,
and it’s even worse when the weather is bad.’ Even so,
a day after the pilot finished, Peter said he enjoyed his
four car-free weeks. ‘It was a great experience. I think,
as far as my family and myself are concerned, we could
get by perfectly well without a car. It turned out to be
a real eye-opener, and something I’ll be giving some
serious thought by the end of this year.’A second Mobility Experience is scheduled to launch
in March. Knowledge gathered from both pilots will
ultimately be used to define the MAAS offering in
Zuidas.More info:
http://www.amsterdam.nl/zuidas/zuidas-mobility/