Raising Awareness on Mobility Costs for Households: A Lever for Changing Residential Choices and Improving Local Governance? Experimentation in the French Alpine Metropolitan Area

Despite efforts and innovations in urban planning and public transport options, urban sprawl and car use in metropolitan areas keep increasing. This is particularly true around large alpine conurbations, which are very dynamic but have significant geographic constraints. In regards to residential choices - the subtle trade-off between what people want, their resources, and personal and collective constraints - individual household decisions tend to take precedence over public policy objectives and tools. The MORECO project (MObility and REsidential COsts, INTERREG Alpine Space Programme) was developed in order to address questions about the tools that are needed to inform and raise awareness about household residential choices, as well as the associated “urban planning/transport” governance issues. The French partners - the Rhône-Alpes region and the PACTE-Territoires Laboratory - developed a mobility cost simulator (MobiCost) for both households and public and private professionals involved in household residential choices. The past three years of work have allowed us to assess user acceptance of the tool (how well users understand the tool and how to use it) and governance (determining the most appropriate institutional authority to manage the tool, given that it's primarily an awareness-raising tool with both political and technical impact).