Supervised leisure activities are important for the development of children and young people, but in rural areas there is often a lack of suitable mobility options outside of school hours. Participation usually takes place via individually organized driving services provided by parents (“parent taxi”), which leads to organizational and time burdens for legal guardians. This system promotes unsustainable mobility patterns, increases traffic and emissions, and causes additional stress. The central challenge lies in the inadequate public mobility infrastructure, which results in numerous individual trips with low capacity utilization and a lack of sustainable alternatives.
Sustainable and self-determined mobility for children and adolescents
The MIKiYo project (Mobilityinitiative for Kids and Youngsters) develops and tests an innovative mobility offer for children and adolescents as well as their legal guardians. The aim is to create sustainable and efficient solutions for the way to leisure activities. The focus is on children and young people as mobility users, as well as their legal guardians and other caregivers (e.g. older siblings, grandparents) as potential mobility providers.
A key challenge is to integrate the individual needs and social dynamics of all parties into the mobility concept. Trust, safety and reliability are crucial success factors here. In addition to the active involvement of children and young people and the optimization of carpooling solutions, the integration of active forms of mobility is an equally important project to give young road users more independence in managing their daily journeys.
Objectives of the MIKiYo project:
- Organizing sustainable routes to and from leisure activities for children and adolescents
- Promoting self-determined and active mobility for young road users
- Relieving parents by providing alternative mobility solutions
- Reducing traffic volumes and strengthening regional infrastructure
- Developing a regional carpooling and organizational platform
Expected impacts and benefits of the mobility concept
By bundling and coordinating the distribution of driving assignments among the participating parents, the number of individual trips is reduced. This leads to a reduction in the number of kilometers driven and a relief for the legal guardians. Due to its complexity, the optimization of mobility in this context can only be achieved by means of a digital solution – comparable to a carpooling platform, but with specific conditions and requirements.
Expected positive effects for various target groups:
- Children and young people can access their leisure activities more easily, which increases their equal opportunities. In addition, they learn independence from their parents at an early stage – while at the same time ensuring supervision.
- Legal guardians benefit from the jointly organized mobility model, as it relieves their burden of care by allowing them to share driving services within a larger community.
- Associations and event organizers achieve additional advertising and communication effects through the platform. Greater accessibility of the offers can lead to an increase in the number of participants and thus to positive economic effects.
- The region and local authorities benefit from a further building block for sustainable mobility in line with the strategic objective of decarbonizing the transport system. The project helps to increase the region's attractiveness.
- Environment: A reduction in motorized private transport due to fewer trips means lower CO₂ emissions and thus leads to a reduction in environmental pollution.
These effects are to be calculated as part of the project.
