Kobla for municipalities

Greener municipality. Healthier inhabitants

There´s enough driving now. Petrol and diesel cars pollute. Electric cars are far better, but take up just as much space in the car jam and take up parking space in cities. People want something more enjoyable on those square meters! At the same time, municipalities wants more inhabitants and the city center needs shoppers. Municipal councils want more people walking, cycling, using public transport and carpooling. And fewer cars.

Infrastructure to facilitate more walking, cycling and the use of public transport are costly. In Norway, the prerequisite for funds from the state as part-financing of an urban growth package, depends on wether the municipality has a clear and targeted ambition to reduce growth in car traffic.

Behavior Change

Habits can be hard to change. Especially those of others.

As behavior change is the goal, we are dependent on being in a position to influence. We depend on earning the user’s trust, and we depend on being able to give the right suggestions at the right time. Kobla uses machine learning in the app to remember the user’s travel habits, then it tries to gently nudge the user to make it cheaper and more environmentally friendly in advance of their next trip .

Research shows that small friendly pushes can often be enough for the snowball to start rolling in a more environmentally friendly direction. When Kobla informs each individual inhabitant about the costs of their use of a car, such as fuel, tolls, parking, insurance, service and loss of value, we also highlight the possible savings to be had by using other means of transport. Kobla gives residents an extra incentive to travel car-free: the good feeling. As in computer games in general, Kobla plays on the feelings of mastery, vanity and belonging.

Kobla is a tool to find out which methods work, on whom. In the app, we have the opportunity for A / B testing against defined target groups, to better understand the end users’ motivations and preferences. As the pandemic has left its mark on society and public transport is now seen in a new light, it is important to uncover what can work in this setting.

Knowledge about travel habits

Better decisions based on data

Naturally, municipal planners want to know as much as possible about how the inhabitants use their city, to improve planning. But Kobla is built with a focus on privacy, so user´s itineraries and location data are not given to the municipality. Kobla can not influence unless we have the users’ trust. Influencing greener behavior, and getting to know as much as possible about the inhabitants’ travel habits are two completely different things. Two such goals must not be mixed together. Furthermore, Kobla is a perfect opportunity to make citizens aware of the value of the data they unconsciously produce about themselves. In Kobla, a municipality can ask each individual citizen if they are willing to share data about their route choices on everyday trips. In return, the citizen is assured that their habits count in the statistics that determine how the municipality prioritizes planning development, plowing, sweeping and so n.

Our focus is figuring out what it takes for you to make your work trip a little more sustainable. For Kobla, each person’s tipping point is more important than their route choice.

What is a smart city?

Kobla is the simple interface to complex systems.

Many wonder what it really means when a city declares that it has ambitions to become a smart city. And the next question is often why nothing happens? In cities that are considered “smart”, there are an ever-increasing number of sources that offer real-time data that can ideally contribute to improving the quality of life of the inhabitants.

All this information is overkill without a filter.

Kobla is this filter. Kobla can be enriched with the data sources the municipality has (such as sophisticated IoT platforms), and more as they become available, but it will always be the simple interface the citizen enjoys dealing with. And Kobla is ready to be launched for the municipality now!

Mobility as a service

The concept of mobility covers a wide range. This is how we interpret it: The Kobla app learns your habits and your travel pattern. When the app details how you could usesomething other than a private car, we can include all the new mobility variants. In this way, Kobla is also a comparison service for mobility services. Kobla can assess and give recommendations based on each individual user’s actual usage pattern.

“How would your costs change if you switched to a hybrid? Cycled one day a week? Sold one car? Combined bus and scooter?

You could save 100 euros a month by switching to car sharing! ”

”The app works as a motivator to change travel habits, across segments. Kobla offers local adaptation and tailoring, so that the solution can suit different types of cities, regardless of topography, weather and size.

Rune EiterjordAdvisor in mobility, operations and System Development at Nordland County

Test drive Kobla

Do you want to know more about how the municipality can use Kobla?
Have a chat with Ole.

Request a Demo

Kobla is free for the user, but is rolled out in collaboration with a region, municipality, local transit authority or a company. Please contact us! If you are curious about us, we are definitely curious about you!

Ole Liabø

CEO and Co-founder
+47 454 69 123
oleml@kobla.no

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