Sparsely populated areas often struggle with ensuring access to public services, including basic things like supply of healthcare to the elderly or even local transportation. The EU funded MAMBA project aims to improve “people to service” and “service to people” mobility and accessibility in rural areas of the Baltic Sea region. New website to be launched soon.
The 2nd trans-national MAMBA partner meeting took place on the 22 and 23 of March, in Joensuu, North Karelia. The EU funded MAMBA project started in September 2017 and will run until August 2020.
The MAMBA consortium will evaluate existing, sustainable ways of managing and financing rural mobility that could be transferred to other regions. Good practice examples will be presented to public authorities, transport and service providers, and civil society through a public database and a rural mobility compendium.
This objective will be achieved among other things with the help of a series of activities, including implementation of pilot projects and the establishment of mobility centers as well as organizing transnational rural Mobility Seminars.
Status of the project
With the 1st reporting period of the project coming to an end, it was time to present some first results from the ‘analytical’ work package led by Nordregio.
In this work package, we are producing maps on the accessibility and socioeconomic trends in the partner regions, and developing knowledge concerning legal, economic and sociocultural framework conditions for innovative rural mobility solutions. This knowledge will be used by the project partners when developing their pilots in the forthcoming months
The next MAMBA meeting will take place in Latvia, in September 2018 and partners will analyze and discuss the results and advancement of the project. More information will soon be available on www.mambaproject.eu