Our Dutch pilot Amsterdam
Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, is a vibrant and diverse city with a rich history, an international atmosphere, and a unique charm. The city is famous for its historic canals, picturesque facades, and lively neighborhoods. With its compact center and cultural diversity, Amsterdam attracts millions of visitors from around the world each year. All this liveliness and all these people cause a lot of traffic movements. Regarding the traffic, Amsterdam is a true cycling city. Bicycles are namely the most popular mode of transport among residents, and the extensive network of bike paths makes getting around easy and efficient. At the same time, the city center is crowded with pedestrians and tourists, creating a lively, though sometimes chaotic, atmosphere. Car traffic is deliberately discouraged, leading to high parking pressure and limited space for vehicles. For this reason, the city is promoting shared mobility options, such as shared cars, (cargo)bikes, and e-mopeds, to reduce congestion and improve livability. This combination of historic charm and modern mobility solutions makes Amsterdam a unique and forward-thinking city that continues to seek a balance between accessibility and quality of life.
Why is Amsterdam part of the STEER-NWE project?
As a municipality, Amsterdam boasts a fair amount of experience in the field of (e-) carsharing and charging infrastructure, yet there are also many challenges experienced, of which Amsterdam would be keen to explore the best solutions together with other municipalities, cities and other partners. For the Dutch capital, joining this specific Interreg NWE project is particularly valuable for knowledge exchange of experiences with other kindred participating cities.
Amsterdam already holds knowledge-sharing discussions with other (international) cities about the challenges experienced in order to create profitable synergies. Amsterdam would like to build on this by creating a more extensive knowledge network. In this, Amsterdam would also like to explore innovative concepts and initiatives that have not yet been used/minimally used, and that might add to the implementation and adoption of shared mobility and charging infrastructure as possible solutions for experienced challenges.
As cities and municipalities, we all experience our own challenges, and try to work out how we can adopt mobility systems to include the shared (e) cars to optimize the systems for users. By sharing the challenges and experiences we can help each other in creating a knowledge network that everyone can benefit from.
What will this pilot discover?
The Dutch pilot seeks to combine the offer of shared mobility and car charging in the existing city areas and new area developments. The parking pressure in the city is currently high, and the new area developments will have low parking norms in public space for visitors and a norm of zero for inhabitants. This is why Amsterdam expects a high demand for shared cars. These will be provided to meet residents' mobility requirements. In this, the pilot will experiment with a limited number of reserved parking spaces with charging stations exclusively used by electric shared cars. This will involve reserving parking spaces for participating car sharing organisations who will share and rotate on these parking spots, so that the limited space can be used optimally, there is always supply for the residents and other users, and the charging stations are sufficiently used.
With this, the city explores an innovative way of integrating shared mobility into the existing mobility system. One of the current biggest challenges concerns the charging deficit at charging stations used exclusively by station based shared cars. The shared cars which have reserved charging points charge significantly less, resulting in an exploitation shortage for the charge point operators. This is why the pilot experiments with rotating on the parking places and charging points, so we can explore a possible durable method of using shared e-cars in the mobility system.
Additionally, by using the public space more efficiently, more space throughout the city can be freed up and be invested towards other goals, contributing to high quality public space, increasing the liveability of the city.
What does e-carsharing mean to Amsterdam?
For the City of Amsterdam, electric car sharing (e-carsharing) is a key tool to keep the city livable, accessible, and sustainable. As the Shared Mobility team, we work every day on solutions that make better use of urban space while reducing CO₂ emissions. E-carsharing is one of the instruments we use to contribute to this.
Electric shared cars contribute to cleaner air and less noise, in which adding one shared car can replace multiple privately owned cars. This means less pressure on public space, more room for greenery, pedestrians, and cyclists, and lower parking demand in neighborhoods. By promoting the use of electric vehicles, we also actively support Amsterdam’s goal of becoming emission.
By collaborating and creating synergies between public and private organizations, we are building a well-distributed network of electric shared cars across the city, in which we aim to meet users' mobility needs.
For Amsterdam, e-carsharing is not just an alternative to car ownership, it's a step toward a more shared, sustainable, and future-proof mobility system. This way, the Amsterdam STEER-NWE team is working together to make Amsterdam cleaner, greener, and more accessible for everyone.
