A podcast by Cipra.
The podcast of the Cipra.
The Cipra podcast.
Ciprin podcast.
Interviews, background talks and voices from all Alpine countries.
Listen to this and more in the podcast of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps.
www.Cipra.org
forward slash podcast.
The Cipra podcast.
The podcast of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps.
How do you get to work?
I get to work only by bike.
I was taking the bus and the train, so I have to travel a distance of 20 kilometers.
It's a little bit far for a bike for me.
Since 10, 11 years by train and bus.
By foot. I actually moved to be closer to my work.
By bike. Yes, by e-bike. Every day, almost every day.
Normally with my bicycle, but sometimes by car or sometimes also by motorcycle.
I'm coming to work with my bike. I travel approximately 10 kilometers in one way.
In the winter time, I work 12 kilometers from my home.
I usually go by car.
And in the other times when I don't have these extra trips in the afternoon for the kids and the family.
I travel by electric bike.
I cycle. And yes, I do it in every weather because when it rains, I really don't dare to use a car.
Because there's a horrible traffic jam.
And I'm so much faster on the bike.
By car. And I'm the driver, I'm the only person in the car. So solo with car.
For now, I'm willing to change that at least, I don't know, maybe twice a week, let's say.
I bike even in eight months of pregnancy.
Commuting made easy.
The mobility of commuters in the Slovenian industrial area of Trata is to become more environmentally friendly.
With the help of experiences from similar projects in the border triangle of Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein.
More than 5000 people work in the industrial area of Trata near Ljubljana, Slovenia.
94% commute to work by car.
This leads to traffic jams, soil sealing through huge car parking lots, as well as noise and CO2 emissions.
How can we combat these problems and encourage commuters to adopt more sustainable mobility behavior?
This is what the Trata 2.1 project by Cipra Slovenia and Cipra International is addressing.
Building on the experience of past mobility projects such as Pimmo and Amigo,
company and municipal representatives traveled to the border triangle of Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein in March 2023.
During this study trip, they learned about best practice examples of sustainable and healthy commuter mobility.
Companies with thousands of employees such as Blum, Haberkorn or Ilwerke VKW, municipalities and even an entire country,
the Principality of Liechtenstein, rely on professional mobility management.
This includes mobility managers, incentive systems such as eco points or company bicycles and favorable conditions for the purchase of an e-bike.
One of these good examples is the company Haberkorn in Wolfwurt in the Austrian province of Vorarlberg.
Haberkorn is a technical distributor for the industry, civil engineering, timber construction and carpentry sectors with over 2,000 employees.
After a short train ride and a few minutes of walking, we meet sustainability officer Andrea Soutaluti and mobility manager Gerhard Berlinger there and talk to them.
As Andrea explains, already 2008 the introduction of mobility management began, largely driven by one of today's CEOs of this company.
Today he is the CEO of our company, but in 2008 he was working as a manager in controlling and really convinced about sustainability and wanted to develop, to drive change in our company.
How important is it to have a CEO or people in the higher management that are pushing this topic?
It's very important for us, for our teams in sustainability.
And it really makes things easier. So for Haberkorn sustainability has been a topic for a long time and there was always drive behind it.
And I think this is the difference to other companies that only started it in the last couple of years because of public interest in the topic.
For him, for this CEO, Gerhard Fitt, it's not just words. We see it every day. He comes here by bike also.
So for the employees it's not just words. They see it.
Which measures is Haberkorn taking now very concretely in the area of sustainable mobility? What are the main measures that you take?
We really have a broad program of activities and offers for employees.
But one of the most important is the EcoPoint system. It's an incentive system for employees where employees get a reward for every single climate friendly journey to work every day.
And we really see that it motivates people to get something, also if it's only a small thing, but that they know that the company really likes it if they travel sustainably.
Do you have some numbers, rough numbers, how many employees come by car and how many come by bike, bus or walk? And how has this changed over the last years?
When we started in 2008 we had about 65% of individual mobility. And now it's quite 55% which comes with gentle mobility.
As Gerhard and Andrea mentioned, nowadays at Haberkorn more than every second employee comes to work by bike, train, bus or on foot. Many of them shifted away from the car. But why? We asked three of them.
I'm Bernhard Bär. I'm product manager for personal protective equipment, PPE. I'm here since 18 years now located at the headquarter in Wolford-Valberg.
My name is Michael Kettner. I'm working here since 1989 and my job is I'm a lead buyer for bearings and linear technology.
My name is Salvatore Siciliano. I work in Haberkorn since March 2008. I'm 52 years old and I'm product manager of the hydraulic system and components.
Me personally I get to work only by bike. A few years ago we had two cars at home and we decided to sell one. It made no sense. The way to do work is only a few kilometres so it takes me around 5 to 10 minutes via bike and this is the weapon of choice for me.
When I was young I always came by car or by motorcycle but they changed a few years ago and so I tried to drive every day with my bike, my bicycle.
At first we had an e-bike promotion here in the company. Many years ago, I think about eight or nine years ago and that pushed me. So I bought an e-bike and that pushed me to drive with a bike. And also we had a reward by eco points. That was also a thing that I like. From my home to the office it's only three and a half kilometres.
I went to work in the beginning with my car for about four years and then in 2012 I changed to the public transportation. It's easier, it doesn't cost a lot of money because Haberkorn refunded a few euros and for me no stress on the street. I go to work relaxed, without traffic, jam and so on.
It was ok because the street was not so full like today, 12 years ago or 15 years ago. Now it's crazy. Here on the Autobahn A14 it's crazy. It's 14 kilometres from Hohenems to Wohlfurt. Since eight years I have an e-bike and I use the e-bike in the summer days when it's warm and sometimes I use also the Vespa.
With my second car I had good arguments to take the car because it was cold, it was rainy or I had another issue. Nowadays I can only use the bike or the bus but the bus is not as fast as the bike for me. I have to wear the right clothes, rainwear, protect myself from cold and rain and then it is no problem.
What I have learned is that it's just a thing of being used to it. We get points every day we come via bike or bus and with these points that we collect we can get bouchers to buy sports equipment or to go shopping.
We get company Harbacorn rewards if you come by bike for example. Another thing is that we are able to buy bicycles for cheaper price in a program that helps us save money. So we get as an employee of Harbacorn you can buy a bike for around half the price and pay it monthly.
We had also a workshop with Amigo where the awareness of the topic of soft mobility was created and that was also a key experience for me. And also the traffic is horrible for me. I don't like to drive with cars because there are too many cars on the road and I hate to drive by cars so I prefer to drive by the bicycle.
In the traffic time it's longer with a car than with a bicycle.
It's healthier and we in Vorarlberg have every half an hour there is a bus or a train. The connections are very very good. And also the bus station is here in front of the office.
I think it's enough because we have the Maximo card that I use. It's fully paid from Harbacorn. We found. Then we have the e-bike that in the beginning Harbacorn pays and we go to pay it back in four years. More incentive I don't need. I think it's not necessary.
I'm not sure if Harbacorn can do more. The rest is things like the village that we live in Wolfwood is doing quite a lot so the bicycle ways are built new or more and so the surrounding makes it more attractive.
Employees feel that sustainability is not just a program that someone does and it affects you personally. That means it affects us the way we travel. We travel more by train, less by plane if possible.
And of course that affects the time that you are away because riding a train to Vienna from Vorarlberg or to a big city in Germany or somewhere else it takes you more time.
But Harbacorn tries to support it quite good. That means we can ride the train in first class for example. Going by plane means you are not online. You can't work that good. Same as if you drive a car of course. You have to drive. You can't work on your laptop.
And if you have a seat in first class in train on a business trip you are able to work, to eat. It's more relaxing. You've got a toilet room and so you have to learn and experience that it has got advantages as well.
But maybe you won't be at home at the same time as with a plane. But if you have the right mindset then you will receive a good feeling. Since sustainability is part of our management strategy we get more employees.
More people want to work for Harbacorn because they feel that it makes sense what we are doing and they want to be part of it. So absolutely the right strategy doing sustainability from the heart.
So you heard three of the employees of the company Harbacorn. This company is part of the network Wirtschaft Mobil in Vorarlberg. Within this network currently 14 companies exchange their measures and experiences concerning mobility management on a regular basis.
But now we have to catch the bus and move on to Dornbeern. On the bus we talk to Katarina Sladolyov from the Slovenian development agency Sora about her impressions.
We are the communications partner for the project and my role is trying to figure out how to bring the theme of sustainable mobility closer to the target groups.
How do you personally get to work every day?
By foot. I actually moved to be closer to my work because I come from a different part of Slovenia which is a good hour driving away and since I don't have a good public transportation option I moved to Škofja Loka to be closer to work.
What is the main problem in the region of Škofja Loka or Trata for people when getting to work?
From talking to employees and from the initial survey that we've done the data shows that people that live further away from work don't have really good options for public transportation.
When there is public transportation the timings are not necessarily aligned so it's hard for them to choose that option because they would be late to work especially because they have to be exactly on time at work.
The cycling infrastructure is getting better, there is a lot of construction happening and this public administration is very open to sustainable mobility but still there is a lot to be done on safe cycling infrastructure.
So right now we are driving on a bus from the company Haberkorn to downtown Dornfjern to the Energy Institute.
What do you hope to learn from what companies and communities here in Vorarlberg, Austria and also in Liechtenstein? What do you hope to learn from that concerning sustainable mobility and mobility management?
This region has a longer tradition in promoting sustainable mobility in companies than we do in Slovenia.
So primarily I would love to learn how they communicated with the employees the need to change towards sustainable mobility options and how to do it as user friendly as possible because we are all creatures of habit and it's really hard for us to change the habits.
So when we want to introduce something that is so significant in our life, our way, how we move, we need to do it with as least amount of effort needed from the participants and I just want to learn how they have tackled it here and how they made such significant changes.
So we are not at the end of the trip now but still you already saw some good examples for example at Haberkorn and Blume, what impressed you most, which measures that motivate employees to switch mobility?
It was really interesting to see how they tackle the whole parking issue. So I love that both companies use EcoPoint's collection for the employees that come to work sustainably.
I think that's a really good motivator and both companies work more on the, as we say, sticks and carrots, they work more on the carrot side of changing the habits which means they work more on motivating people towards positive change than giving penalties for the bad habits.
So I think that will be a good lesson for us to bring home and we were already talking with companies that are participating in the project that we're going to do the bike month, so promoting biking to work and also the good examples from both companies here show us that that's a very successful way of motivating people to come to work with the bike.
So communication is, for example, with EcoPoints or introducing EcoPoint systems, rewards, this is a, what would you say, how big should this part be compared to infrastructure measures, what's more important?
It's hard to say what's more important because both things contribute. I do think that the current infrastructure that we have in Shkofi Aloka, especially for cycling, for closer relations, so like let's say up to 5-10 kilometers, is good enough, which also shows the examples of, for instance, Mika who is with us, he's the mobility manager for Sibo Group and he comes from Kran every day with a bike for 20 kilometers.
So there is infrastructure which is okay to use, so I would say if we communicate and people start changing their habits, then also the municipality will see the bigger push towards sustainable mobility which will motivate them to build more infrastructure.
So if I would have to choose, I would say let's start with communication, with changing our habits and showing that there's a lot of us who want to come to work sustainably and then the infrastructure will follow.
But how to implement mobility management within a company? At the Energy Institute in Doanbien we meet David Madeleina. He and his colleagues consult municipalities and companies who want to implement mobility management.
Within the CIPRA project called Amigo Active Commuter Mobility, the Energy Institute developed a toolbox for corporate mobility management with more than 30 different measures.
One of them is to analyze the status quo of mobility in the company through employee surveys or also through counting vehicles. Another one is the definition of responsibilities, as David explains.
If you're forming a team, just see that you have persons from different parts of the company, so it could be finance, but also like the human resource management, the facility management, so all those aspects come together in mobility management because all of them, if you're implementing measures, all of those parts are important in making them successful.
It's always good to give your employees a picture like why you're doing that and which strategies you're following in implementing measures in mobility management, so really think about that.
Another measure is to create a mobility starter package for new employees.
We developed the mobility starter package that's actually a small folder with all the mobility measures that are taken in the company, maybe with a little bit of text like what's the sense of the measure.
Here in addition, for example at the Energy Institute, we use a drinking bottle to give them and just tell them to try a different mode of transport and not coming by car, but we have many possibilities.
It's also a very important aspect because when you change your life habits, for example a new workplace is a new habit in your life, and that's a very good point to get people changing their behavior.
I think that's a very useful and also a simple measure that can be implemented quite fast.
It could also be, I guess at Harbour Cone, you also have the test ticket for three weeks, for example for public transportation, which comes directly within this package.
Incentives and rewards can be also an effective measure to change mobility behavior, says David Marlena from the Energy Institute.
Like a bonus system, some kind of bonus system is really effective in behavior change.
It's really effective because even if you implement a loss, like for example if you need to pay for the parking system, still you can make many small wins.
Because every day if you use other transports, like if you come by bike or by public transportation, you get points, you collect points, so every day you get a small win out of the bonus system.
And it's a very good thing because you get employees think about their mobility choice every day.
As soon as you have to type in which mode of transport you took, it's very useful because everyone thinks, oh yeah, okay, today I took the car, and maybe the next time when it's good weather I could use the bike just to collect some points.
Or because it's like also to connect some points of course because it's convenient as well.
So we have our timestamp outside and we just put the badge on it when we arrive and we can just click on the mode of transport we're using.
From Dornbeern we take a short trip to the Principality of Lichtenstein.
Thousands of commuters come to Lichtenstein every day from Austria and Switzerland.
Many of them work in banking or in industry.
And most of them come by car.
People like Georg Seele want to change this.
Nowadays Georg Seele is president of the Lichtenstein Mobility Club.
But for many years Seele was a member of the executive board at the company InfiCon in Lichtenstein, which develops and produces high precision vacuum measurement devices for the industry.
He introduced mobility management within his company already decades ago.
Everything began with the new company building.
In the planning phase of this building there was a question do we need two garages underground, two levels, or do we need one level?
And I convinced, I was also in the management of the InfiCompulsors, and I convinced my colleagues that we only build one level, underground garage, but introduce mobility management.
And I could show to them that we save about, when we consider all costs, about 150,000 Swiss francs per year.
The biggest hurdle was actually the responsible person for human resources.
She said, George, if we do that, I will not find any people for this company anymore.
Nobody wants to work with InfiComp.
And it was the opposite.
Of course we made it, and we had from the beginning on the one hand side a benefit.
Whoever did not regularly need a parking space got money at the end of the year.
And whoever needed a parking space or wanted one had to pay for it.
And we, I also could work with a Swiss research project, and we, one found out in Switzerland, if the difference between what people get and what they would have to pay is about 1500 Swiss francs, it modifies the behavior.
Georg Seele explains why external costs for car traffic are much higher than for other means of traffic.
In Switzerland, each car produces external costs of about 1000 Swiss francs per year.
External costs are typically following costs of accidents.
If there is an accident, of course the insurance will pay the direct costs.
But nobody pays the employer that he is missing an employee.
And the external costs for car traffic are so high.
And in Switzerland, the external costs for walking and cycling together are no costs but win.
So actually, you know, politicians actually they should know it.
Cycling to work instead of driving by car also means less sick days, which is another positive effect on the cost for the company.
And we experienced that the people who ride their bicycles in winter had not a single ill day in winter.
And car drivers typically have once a winter, they have a they are out of work with the flu.
When you look at the productivity gain for an employer, and it was important for me, these facts I could sell to my colleagues in management.
I explained them, listen, when we buy a new means of production, we always calculate the return on investment.
But we have a much higher return on investment with our employees when they come active to the company.
So healthier employees cost less, says Georg Seele from the Lichtenstein Mobility Club.
In the next episode of the Cipra podcast, we will hear more about the mobility situation in Lichtenstein
and about which conclusions the Slovenian participants of the study trip draw for the industrial zone Trata.
Thank you for listening. My name is Michael Gauss.
A podcast by Cipra.
The podcast by Cipra.
The Cipra podcast.
Ciprin podcast.
Interviews, background talks and voices from all Alpine countries.
Listen to this and more in the podcast of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps.
www.Cipra.org forward slash podcast.
www.Cipra.org