Tampere explores how to communicate health benefits of active travel

The Finnish city of Tampere is undertaking a research project to explore how it can embed sustainable mobility into everyday life.

The Keli project will use the Tampere.Finland application’s mobility carbon footprint calculator to examine what kind of messages can be used to encourage citizens to get around more sustainably, such as emphasising the health benefits that more active forms of travel can bring.

Impact on health

Users of the calculator will be encouraged to join a group that provides information about the health effects of everyday incidental activity.

The mobility carbon footprint calculator was released last summer and has more than 1,000 users every month who can obtain information about their own mobility and its impact on climate change. An individual user cannot be identified from the data.

“We hope that as many residents of Tampere as possible will adopt the calculator and help us obtain valuable statistical data, not only for this research, but also for traffic planning and the development of a more comfortable city,” said project manager Anna Vilhula from the City of Tampere.

“We hope that as many residents of Tampere as possible will adopt the calculator and help us obtain valuable statistical data, not only for this research, but also for traffic planning and the development of a more comfortable city”

The Keli project is carried out by the City of Tampere, the University of Helsinki, the VATT Institute for Economic Research, Kausal Oy and Geniem Oy.

It is co-financed by the Ministry of the Environment as part of the Sustainable City programme, which accelerates the comprehensive sustainable development of municipalities. The five-year programme (2019–2023) is coordinated by the Ministry of the Environment.