Bohinj and Tržič, a SaMBA Pilot
To reduce the number of cars in the city center and reduce the amount of parking to create a shift to sustainable mobility.
Problem
Bohinj has an increasing number of guests in terms of overnight stays and daily visits. The challenge is that most of these guests arrive and use the car for their mobility.
Tržič has a considerable amount of land use destined for parking areas, problems with traffic and pollution.
Description
Bohinj
For the pilot case in Bohinj, the main goals are:
- reduction of the number of cars arriving in the area, and consequently the size of parking areas within and near Natura 2000 areas;
- increase in the number of tourists arriving in the area by public transport (bus, trains) and with sustainable mobility vehicles (cycles, electrical cars,…);
- increase in the number of people using sustainable transport;
- changing the behaviour of the local population and visitors.
The municipal strategy is to:
- significantly charge the parking fee by the lake. The measure was introduced in the summer of 2020, the impact is to be evaluated.
- build new parking garages. There are several project ideas for garages, but they could only accommodate a small share of incoming cars and some would be in not most favourable sites.
- encourage visitors to arrive by train or bus even with inflexible rail and bus infrastructure.
The pilot in Bohinj will support the behaviour change which will be accompanied by workshops and findings connected to:
- integration of three distinct bus services into a seamless one (information, pricing, payment methods). Synchronisation between the Ministry of infrastructure, Municipality, tourist board, multiple service providers and the public would be needed;
- development of a tourist (hiking) product, enabled by weekend bus service to the starting points of trails.
Tržič
Tržič has got a SUMP (Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan) a few years ago and has approached challenges linked to mobility in a well-structured manner. Linked to a high level of car use, there is a significant amount of space used for parking of cars. As the town has little space available, due to the fact it is placed in a mountain valley, it makes no point to use such a vast amount of space for parking.
The municipal strategy is to:
- increase safety through roads constructions and refurbishments;
- implement a 30 km/h speed limit in all dense urban areas; even stricter measures could be implemented in the proximity of schools and kindergartens;
- balance the relationship between supply and demand with new parking regimes (free parking increases the use of cars in Tržič; on the other hand, it lowers the accessibility of parking meaning that a larger amount of parking places on the good location are full of cars parked there for a longer time);
- lower the amount of car use of 15 % in the most used roads.
Results
Tržič
The car parking tickets machine will be installed permanently. It would be combined with a display of available spaces. This would be part of a larger parking policy on which parking regulation measures would be grounded. Monitoring would contain several cars before/after on this and adjacent parking spaces.
Lessons Learned
Town council members in the current term generally have little experience, low level of understanding of the topic and tend to take passive roles. Furthermore, it was difficult to get their attendance or cooperation outside of town council meetings.
Employees in the Municipality show great interest in the topic of Sustainable Mobility, including parking. They go the extra mile in making the change.
Generally speaking, in Slovenia, there is a low level of trust that the local council would take citizens’ considerations seriously. The citizens’ commitment to public participation is low, so all the activities are planned in a way that builds on this reality.
The main driver for citizens was keeping an eye to the changes and steering the public discourse to their favour.
