Citizens of Fagerås planning future Mobility through user tailored innovation process.
In the small village of Fagerås 8km northwest of the town Kil citizens are invited to contribute to the future of mobility through an innovation process. The processes started to take form in the fall of 2019 through a series of stronger combined webinars led by the Swedish partner RISE. A questionnaire and various meetings with the local community group, acting as a focus group, later and a service has started to take form.
Through these meetings and the questionnaire it was found that citizens of Fagerås needed to be mobile in order to, amongst others; do grocery shopping, visit friends and family, attend leisure time activities and run errands. The largest problem faced by the residents was to solve their life puzzle which contains many activities in a short time frame. This results in most households owning at least one but on average 2,1 private cars is Fagerås kil. In order to meet citizens needs in Fagerås Region Värmland is focusing on making it easier to complete the life puzzle.
Imagine a day where you wake up and you are able to catch the public available school bus together with your children. Drop them off at school before transferring and taking the train to your final destination, work. After a flexible day at work, on your way home you are able pick up your grocery shopping that you ordered last night and now is delivered to the installed e-commerce lockers. Before finally grabbing another school bus to go home.
This could all potentially be the future for the citizens of Fagerås. There are already plans to open up the school buses to the public, a resource that is already there but not fully used. By optimising and ensuring that every seat that we drive is made available we are able to improve our offer to our customers. Furthermore a discussion as commenced regarding bringing chilled e-commerce lockers to Fagerås and we are very hopeful that project will be able to deliver. This is something that the local community group previously has sought to implement but has not been able to do so yet, and hopefully the strength of Region Värmland as a cooperating partner will facilitate this. These measure could really improve the ability to complete the life puzzle without as large dependency on private car ownership.
Further offerings could include looking at what school buses do after taking the kids to school. Perhaps an extra round trip every Tuesday that brings the older generation of Fagerås to the centrally located areas for some social activity or further travel could be introduced. Or maybe the project could introduce a bike library. All measures are of course discussed and analysed together with the community group and has gone through the innovation processes that RISE has introduced. Thus ensuring a large level of citizen involvement when Region Värmland, and the stronger combined project, is building knowledge of the future of mobility.