The Sustainable Urban Transitions (SUT) Lab was launched in April 2025 as a partnership of ETH Zurich and the Bolt Urban Fund, with the aim of supporting cities in accelerating their shift towards low-carbon, multimodal mobility systems. The SUT Lab aims to bring innovative, data-driven research into practical solutions for city planning teams, to accelerate and optimise their sustainable urban mobility and infrastructure planning.
In the context of the European Union, the SUT Lab supports cities to tackle critical urban transport projects of their Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs). The first Lab pilots were launched in the cities of Seville and Hannover. Cities around the world are setting ambitious sustainable mobility targets, but quantitative evidence on how to achieve them is lacking. Evidence-based planning is needed to reduce the risk of unexpected effects, better understand user needs (reducing possible opposition while increasing adoption), and optimise the use of public funding to accelerate projects.
Preliminary Results for Seville and Hannover
During the first 6 months, the SUT Lab has focused on understanding shared micromobility and its potential integration with public transport in two pilot cities: Hannover, Germany and Seville, Spain. The Lab has used diverse micromobility datasets collected by Bolt in conjunction with public data to better understand the current e-scooter and e-bike usage patterns, infrastructure utilisation gaps, potential safety hotspots, as well as potential options to better integrate the transport systems of multiple transport modes.
In Seville, preliminary results show that e-bike travel concentrates on central corridors and riverfront axes, with pronounced temporal patterns and differences between locals and tourists. Sensor data was used to identify potential safety hotspots so planners can prioritise solutions such as surface quality improvements, crossing redesign, safer access near stations, and better placement of parking areas.
In Hannover, shared micromobility already functions as an effective first-and last-mile connector, with trips that are short in distance and duration, and concentrated around public transport nodes. Usage patterns are highly local, skewed towards the younger population and show gender differences in timing and spatial clustering. Simulations are being used to screen accessibility issues at a disaggregate level and to highlight where long access and egress walks persist, particularly at the urban periphery.
The next steps of the SUT Lab include the analysis of additional data sources such as questionnaires, ride-hailing data and street images, and the improvement of simulation capabilities to better represent multiple and integrated modes of transport. For the city and regional partners, the practical insight is an evidence-based estimation of which alternative measures might be more impactful and aligned with their strategic goals.
Orlando Roman is a doctoral researcher at the Singapore-ETH Centre and the Infrastructure Management Group of the Institute of Construction and Infrastructure Management, ETH Zürich. Research areas: Adaptive Planning, Sustainable Infrastructure Systems, Decision-making under Deep Uncertainty, Uncertainty Characterization and Quantification, Multiobjective and Sequential Decision Analytics.
Katja Schimohr is a postdoctoral researcher at the Transportation and Mobility Planning Group of the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems, ETH Zürich.
Research interests: Empirical research on travel behavior, Collection and analysis of panel data, Spatial statistics.
Xuan He is a postdoctoral researcher at the Transportation and Mobility Planning Group of the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems, ETH Zürich.
Research interests: Transport Geography, Travel Behaviour, Transportation Planning.
Grace Kagho is a postdoctoral researcher at the Infrastructure Management Group of the Institute of Construction and Infrastructure Management, ETH Zürich.
Research interest: Agent-based modelling, Travel behaviour, Transport planning.
David Zani is a doctoral researcher at the Infrastructure Management Group of the Institute of Construction and Infrastructure Management, ETH Zürich. Research area: He is working on cost-benefit analysis of urban infrastructure projects. He is also involved in teaching and student project supervision.
Prof. Dr. Eva Heinen is the Head of the Transportation and Mobility Planning Group.
Prof. Dr. Bryan T. Adey is the Head of the Infrastructure Management Group.
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