Lisbon partners to develop innovative mobility solutions

The Portuguese capital city of Lisbon will partner with the Sustainable Urban Transitions (Sut) Lab – a partnership of ETH Zurich and the Bolt Urban Fund – for the development and testing of innovative urban mobility solutions.

The purpose of the Sut Lab is to bring innovative, data-driven research into practical solutions for city planning teams, for the purpose of accelerating and optimising their sustainable urban mobility and infrastructure planning.

City of innovation

This initiative positions Lisbon as a laboratory for testing concrete interventions in public space, with the aim of improving movement throughout the city.

“Lisbon has been establishing itself as a city of innovation applied to real needs,” said Gonçalo Reis, vice-president of Lisbon City Council. “The partnership we have formed with ETH Zurich Sut Lab via the Bolt Urban Fund, will allow us to test concrete, data- and evidence-based solutions to open more streets to people and foster integrated movement, promoting organised and efficient urban mobility.”

“What makes this partnership distinctive is that we are not just studying the streets of Lisbon, we are testing real interventions and measuring their impact with rigour”

With a data-driven evidence-based approach, the Sut Lab will collaborate with Lisbon City Council on the design and implementation of pilot projects to test and evaluate measures to better balance traffic, cycling and micromobility flows, public space usage, pedestrian accessibility, and more.

The resulting research will update the current city Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan.

The Sut Lab research team will combine municipal data with Bolt mobility data, simulation modelling, and surveys of users. This analysis will allow for a precise understanding of how the city functions day-to-day and enable targeted solutions to be pilot tested with impact measured before any potential wider rollout.