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.

Along the route, two large footprints have been painted high up on a bare gable wall, with the caption “Thank you for walking” (Takk for at du går) written underneath. However, walking here is not very tempting when you are right in the middle of exhaust fumes and have to wait ‘an eternity’ for the light to turn green 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,” explained Professor Agnar Johansen.

Johansen is a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU’s) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and supervises three of the 13 PhD research fellows affiliated with the MoST project – Mobilitetslab Stor-Trondheim [Mobility Lab for Greater Trondheim].

Their research will contribute to sustainable solutions that can be implemented in Trondheim – and in other cities. The really interesting thing about these solutions is that they all encourage people to leave their cars at home.

“In the MoST 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.”

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 it is the residents themselves who should help find the optimal solutions.

“We are trying to work out how people can provide feedback within the system,” said Johansen.

Jarvis Suslowicz at NTNU’s Department of Architecture and Planning is one of the PhD research fellows involved in the MoST project. They are researching how so-called temporary urban planning, or ‘tactical urbanism’, can be used to make cycling and walking easier in cities – especially during winter.

“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.”

This concept was then adopted by urban planners and transport authorities, especially during the COVID-19 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,” explained Suslowicz.

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.”

However, 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.”

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.”

The project studies residents’ needs and tries to come up with ways in which they can help contribute to change. In addition, the research focuses on modelling and planning, as well as the development of digital technologies.

The researchers are aiming to develop digital tools that can improve urban planning from the perspective of vulnerable road users. Aashish Adhikari is a PhD research fellow at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

“My research focuses on how we can create more seamless and interconnected journeys,” said 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,” explained Adhikari.

As an example, he highlights digital platforms like the popular fitness app Strava, where people can share information about their own workouts with others in 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,” said Adhikari.

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 visualization 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.”

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 and 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,” emphasized Professor Frank Lindseth at NTNU’s Department of Computer Science.

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 anonymized movement data from mobile networks, which provided insight into how people moved around the city. In addition, 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,” explained Lindseth.

The model was also able to show where and when during the day the problems would occur. Lindseth wishes public agencies would allow researchers access to data from toll stations, for example.

A digital twin of the city could be an important tool when new traffic patterns are to be introduced, like now, when Trondheim’s politicians are about to decide on major restrictions for driving motorized vehicles through the city centre.

“It could have been modelled in a digital twin and provided politicians with a better basis for making such a major decision,” said Lindseth.

The idea to establish the MoST 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, five years later? Project manager Torhild Aarbergsbotten comments as follows:

“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.