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Researchers are looking for solutions that will encourage people to leave their cars at home
Researchers now want to use social networks and sensor data to make cities easier to navigate – preferably on foot.
Elgesetergate in central Trondheim is one of the city’s busiest roads. It is a main thoroughfare in and out of the city centre, with traffic volumes that make the road one of the noisiest and most polluted areas in the city. All day and all night.
High up on a bare gable wall, two large footprints have been painted. Underneath are the words: 'Thank you for walking.'
But walking here is not very tempting when you are right in the middle of exhaust fumes and have to wait ages for a green light to cross the street while buses and lorries thunder past.
“Considering the length of Elgesetergate, it has very few footbridges or underpasses, and you have to wait a very long time at the pedestrian crossings. Other countries, however, have found solutions to this problem. In Montréal in Canada, for example, the entire city has underground walkways,” says Agnar Johansen.
Three researchers are using the city as a living laboratory
Johansen is a professor at NTNU’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. There, he supervises three researchers pursuing PhDs as part of the Greater Trondheim Mobility Lab project.
Their research will contribute to sustainable solutions that can be implemented in Trondheim. And in other cities. Solutions that encourage people to leave their cars at home.
“In the project, the researchers get to use the city as a living laboratory where they can pilot measures and assess their effect. Promising measures can then be scaled up, assuming there is interest,” says Johansen.
It is all about the choices we make. Car or bus? Will we get to our destination faster by cycling? Is there a shortcut so we can avoid cycling in traffic?
The idea is that residents themselves should help find the optimal solutions, the researcher explains.
“We are trying to work out how people can provide feedback within the system,” he says.
Letting citizens take the initiative
Jarvis Suslowicz at the Department of Architecture and Planning is researching how so-called temporary urban planning can be used to make cycling and walking easier in cities.
Especially in winter. They call it ‘tactical urbanism.’
“Tactical urbanism is a concept that emerged in the United States a few years ago. Residents had problems with how their streets functioned and were dissatisfied with the official channels. They took matters into their own hands, built obstacles in the streets, and blocked off areas to make space for their children,” they say.
The concept was adopted by urban planners and transport authorities, particularly during the pandemic.
It is about improving public spaces like roads and car parks with simple, local measures, often initiated by the residents themselves.
The municipality now wants to test these types of solutions in Trondheim.
“We have tested temporary pedestrian paths and cycle lanes in three residential streets in Trondheim. We wanted to find out whether it led to more people walking or cycling on the streets,” Suslowicz explains.
Pop-up cycle lane
In collaboration with the city authorities, a whole road lane was closed and the streets were reconfigured for one-way traffic. Granite blocks were placed in the roadway to separate the cycle lane from car traffic. In other words, they created a pop-up pedestrian path and cycle lane in the street.
“The downside is that these types of measures can lead to increased traffic in neighbouring streets, which is exactly what happened in one of the streets we tested. We received quite a lot of negative feedback from the residents,” says Suslowicz.
But Suslowicz also discovered something surprising. Many of the residents did not want to stop the project. Instead, they came up with suggestions for alternative solutions.
“I was surprised at how enthusiastic people were. We often find that it can be difficult to initiate these kinds of discussions. The city authorities already have their own channels, with planning notices and similar announcements, which may not always reach the local residents,” the researcher says.
Even though they were dissatisfied with the initial solution that was being tested, they wanted change.
The majority of the locals knew that there was a problem with speeding and too much traffic on the street, which was also their children’s route to school.
“They wanted to find solutions. This contact would not have been made if we had not tried something,” says Suslowicz.
A shortcut that brings a sense of happiness
The researchers therefore study residents’ needs and try to come up with ways in which they can help contribute to change. They are also looking into modelling and planning, as well as the development of digital technologies.
The researchers want to develop digital tools that can improve urban planning from the perspective of vulnerable road users. Aashish Adhikari is a researcher at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“My research focuses on how we can create more seamless and interconnected journeys,” says Adhikari.
He wants to develop simple digital tools that enable people to share where they walk or cycle, and their experience of it – especially during winter.
Where do they feel safe, and where do they feel more vulnerable? Which routes make them happy?
“Mapping mobility has traditionally been about counting cars and creating an overview of where and how people move around. But when planning for pedestrians and cyclists, we need to find a different way of measuring things,” explains Adhikari.
As an example, he highlights digital platforms like the popular fitness app Strava. People can share information about their own workouts with others on the social network.
It is a way in which people can motivate and inspire each other to put in more effort.
“People want to be connected in these types of systems. We want to develop strategies where they can contribute data while they are on the move. They can then show where they cycle and share useful information such as a hill that is icy and slippery. If we combine this kind of information, we can step in and make changes,” says Adhikari.
Creating a digital twin of the city
This is how digital tools can be used to share information, which in turn can be used in urban planning.
“We want to take people’s experiences and incorporate them into clear, visual maps. This makes it easy to see what works well and where the city needs to improve. This form of visualisation will help connect different groups – such as parents, the elderly, cyclists, and children – so that they can understand each other and develop a shared understanding of the city,” says the researcher.
The long-term plan is for people’s experiences to become part of the city’s ‘digital twin.’
A digital twin is a virtual copy of the real city.
It can be used to plan, test measures, monitor, and assess what might work and what won’t.
“We require access to a lot of data to be able to create this kind of virtual twin. There is still a lot of work to be done,” says Professor Frank Lindseth at NTNU’s Department of Computer Science.
Useful information for politicians
So far, the researchers have used a digital twin to study the consequences of the bus company AtB moving all its buses to a single hub outside the city.
The model was fed with traffic data from the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, as well as anonymised movement data from mobile networks. This provided insight into how people moved around the city. AI was used to distinguish between different types of vehicles in the data.
This enabled the researchers to simulate different levels of traffic intensity. What happens if twice as many buses are operating on these roads in the morning?
“The results showed that a 50 per cent increase in bus traffic would be manageable, while a doubling would cause problems,” says Lindseth.
The model was also able to show where and when during the day the problems would occur. Lindseth would like public agencies to make it easier for researchers to obtain data from sources such as toll stations.
A better decision-making basis is required
The idea for the project emerged in autumn 2020. The county authorities were keen to gather input on how to address the challenges Trondheim faced on the Elgesetergate road.
So, what does the county council think today, over five years later?
“Time has flown by, and it has taken a while to get to know each other and our different ways of working. It has taken time to get the collaboration up to speed. Our goal was to develop a better basis for decision-making regarding measures in the Miljøpakken partnership. The parties involved are keen to see the practical solutions arising from the research conducted in the programme,” says project manager Torhild Aarbergsbotten.
References:
Adhikari et al. Effective Digital Citizen Participation Processes in Urban Development (PDF), Citizen Participation in Sustainable Urban Development, 2025. DOI: 10.4324/9781003463443-8
Nag et al. Exploring digital twins for transport planning: A review, European Transport Research Review, 2025. DOI: 10.1186/s12544-025-00713-0
Suslowicz, J. & Hillnhütter, H. From temporariness to mobility futures: A review of progress in tactical urbanism as an active travel planning tool, Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives (TRIP), 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.trip.2025.101510
Yusuf et al. Leveraging Big Data and AI for Sustainable Urban Mobility Solutions, Urban Science, 2025. DOI: 10.3390/urbansci9080301
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Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no
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