From eBRT2030 to GEMINI: what UEMI projects teach us about adapting mobility solutions
Cities rarely develop mobility projects without looking at what has already been done elsewhere. When a city starts planning electric buses, shared mobility services or new road safety measures, it makes sense to look at places that have already gone through a similar process. The experience of another city can help answer practical questions, show where problems may appear and give teams a better idea of what needs to be prepared in advance.
At the same time, projects working across several cities quickly show how difficult it is to separate a solution from the place where it was developed. eBRT2030, GEMINI and TRANS-SAFE all bring together cities working on related mobility challenges, but the way those challenges appear locally can be very different. Existing transport networks, available infrastructure, local authorities, regulations and funding arrangements all influence what can actually be implemented.
That is why looking at another city's experience is usually more useful when we also understand the conditions around it.
Different starting points in eBRT2030
The work taking place through eBRT2030 illustrates this particularly well. Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Curitiba and Kigali are all exploring electric BRT, but electrification does not begin from the same point in each city.
Their existing public transport systems and BRT networks have developed differently, and this affects decisions that may initially seem quite straightforward. Charging infrastructure, for example, is not only about choosing a technology or deciding where equipment should be installed. It is also connected to how buses are operated, how depots are organised, how long vehicles remain in service and which organisations are responsible for different parts of the system.
The same applies to fleet planning and financing. An approach used in one city can offer useful information to another, but some parts may fit easily while others require a completely different arrangement. For project teams, knowing where another city faced difficulties or had to change its original plan can be just as useful as seeing the final solution.
What GEMINI learns from testing in different cities
GEMINI approaches the question from another angle. Its Mobility Living Labs are testing shared mobility services in eight European urban areas, which means similar ideas are being tried within very different transport systems.
That difference is important because a mobility service does not exist on its own. It has to connect with the services people already use, respond to local travel habits and work within existing regulations. It also depends on cooperation between public authorities, operators and other organisations involved in the local mobility system.
As the Living Labs move from planning to testing, some of the most useful information comes from the adjustments made along the way. A service may need to be presented differently to users, cooperation between partners may take more time than expected, or a regulatory issue may only become clear once implementation begins. These are not secondary details. For another city considering a similar service, they can help explain what needs to be in place before the same idea can work there.
This is also why comparing Living Labs is useful even when their activities are not identical. The value is not in finding a model that can be repeated in every city, but in understanding how similar ideas behave once they meet different local systems.
Local priorities shaped the work in TRANS-SAFE
TRANS-SAFE faced a similar situation in its road safety work in Kigali, Cape Town, Kumasi and Lusaka. The cities shared the broader objective of improving road safety, but the activities developed through the Living Labs responded to the problems identified locally.
The work combined data collection, community participation, training and infrastructure interventions, but not every city needed the same combination. Road safety is closely connected to local street design, traffic behaviour, the quality of available data and the capacity of institutions to respond to specific risks. A measure that addresses an important problem in one city may have little relevance in another where the main risks are different.
For this reason, the experience of TRANS-SAFE is useful beyond the individual interventions. It also shows how local problems were identified, how communities and institutions were involved and how those discussions influenced the activities that followed.
Making experience useful elsewhere
Projects that work across different cities generate a large amount of knowledge, but much of its value is in the details that are easy to leave out when only final results are presented. Knowing that a pilot worked is useful, but knowing what had to change during implementation, which organisations needed to coordinate and where unexpected difficulties appeared gives a much clearer picture of whether the same approach could be relevant somewhere else.
The experiences from eBRT2030, GEMINI and TRANS-SAFE show this from different perspectives. Electric BRT, shared mobility and road safety involve very different types of interventions, but in all three cases local conditions have shaped the way the work developed.
For cities looking to learn from one another, this context makes the difference between simply finding an interesting example and understanding how that example could actually inform their own work.
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