SPARCS in Reykjavík: Towards the future mobility
SPARCS Leipzig Reykjavik
09 may 2023 | Location: Reykjavik
Smart Mobility

Mobility is the major focus of SPARCS in Reykjavík as transportation becomes the highest greenhouse gas emission sector. The City of Reykjavík and the Iceland state government have worked closely to build a more sustainable and brighter mobility future. Lots of actions have been taken or are ready to be implemented in the near future. As we mentioned in the SPARCS research in the past 2.5 years, our mobility infrastructure and services are relatively behind compared to other European cities, but we see that as an opportunity, especially with the blessing of our renewable energy resources.


Strengthen communication in mobility locally
A few weeks ago, SPARCS RVK organized a visit to the headquarter of Strætó, our cross-municipal bus company, and is so far the only public transport service provider in the city. Daði Áslaugarson, Head of IT, and Ragnheiður Einarsdóttir, Transport Planner, offered an informative presentation and tour to the high-level representative from the cross-functional team from the Office of the Mayor and Chief Executive Officer and Project Office of the Environmental and Planning Department, to strengthen the communication between the two parties.

We have looked at their latest innovative pilot projects, including the e-paper display and solar-powered display, which is a collaboration between Strætó and the City of Reykjavík. The discussion also covered an in-depth discussion of their new ticketing platform, Klappið. New features, such as locations of scooters operated by private entities, are being implemented into the app, to facilitate a smoother multi-modal journey like a MaaS, with the goal to shift consumer behaviour towards the utilization of public and shared transportation.

Klappið just received special recognition at the event Transport Ticketing Global in London last month. The event is the world’s leading and largest smart ticketing event for public transport. It received the special award – Highly Commended – amongst seven nominees in the category of Best Smart Ticketing Programme for less than 200k daily journeys. The purpose is to acknowledge innovative solutions and recognises a public transport operator or public transport authority and their technology partner(s) that have launched a successful smart ticketing programme in the last 2 years.


International knowledge exchange
SPARCS RVK hosted a knowledge-sharing session with our City Partner, Leipzig, together with Strætó and LeipzigMove. LeipzigMove is a multi-modal mobility platform that centralized most of the transportation options on one platform. Both mobility partners shared their cities’ unique ecosystems, opportunities and challenges, with the main discussion centred around the development of MaaS and operation/business partnership in collaboration with private mobility service providers. LeipzigMove representatives also demonstrated their new features on the app live during the meeting which were still in testing phrase. This dialogue is just the beginning and will continue in the future after the SPARCS era. Special thanks to Julia Schließauf, Nadja Riedel from the City of Leipzig, and Marie-Louise Heddrich´s team from Leipzig for such an inspiring session.