Today, we continue our dissemination on social needs territorial conclusions, with interesting facts from Slovakia, as May 2019 is dedicated to the social topic. The territorial results were highly taken into consideration on InnoSchool Learning System (ILS) definition. 

The social need identified by Slovakia on a regional level, more exactly Košice Region, was mobility in the cities and rural areas. Low awareness of people, as well as insufficient infrastructures and public transport services decrease the quality of life of inhabitants due to presence of many negative consequences – like air and soil pollution, noise, traffic jams, parking problems. It is important to notice the Region of Košice and the City of Košice in the center own many precious assets beneficial for solving the mobility challenges. From regional perspective, in the City of Košice the gauge of train rails is identical to gauge of tram rails riding in the city, enabling regional trams to reach smaller cities and municipalities surrounding this metropole. From intercity perspective, there are wide areas around road that might be used for cycling. The quality and age of the trams and buses is adequate from consumers´ perspective. The city and the region should therefore exploit this opportunity, what is described in national, regional local policy planning documents. The statistics describing the trends in usage of public transport in Kosice region are not positive. The usage of public road transport decreased from 28.046 passengers in 2012 to 24.447 in 2016, which is decrease of 12,8%. Although the situation with solid emissions is not critical, the status in carbon dioxide emissions is not satisfactory – the Kosice region is the region with the highest level of concentration from all Slovak regions.  In 2018 within the Košice region, more than 286 thousand of personal cars were actively used (are in evidence). From 2012, the number increased by app. 20% (226 thousands).

The mobility challenges are very much dependent on large investments and service providers, either public, private or combined. However, the mobility sector includes wide range of subsidiary products and services that can be delivered by smaller companies and start-ups. Moreover, beside entrepreneurial ideas directly solving the mobility problems (car/bike sharing, services for bikers, systems providing information for efficient combined travelling), smaller companies can even provide the innovative solutions (technological – inventions, patents, patterns; or systems / applications) to be applied by larger public/state providers for instance to increase the quality of travelling perceived by passengers or to decrease the carbon dioxide emissions.

This challenge will become even more important in the future. As stated before, the data proves the trends in the usage of public transport, carbon dioxide emissions and number of personal cars owned is not positive in Kosice region. These trends are caused by changes in citizens behavior related to economic growth over past 2 decades – the ownership of cars is representing the higher quality of life and wellbeing, at the same time ignoring the negative effects due to lower environmental awareness.

In conclusion, the investments into the quality of infrastructure for integrated mobility schemes, which decrease the propensity of citizens to change the car travelling for public transport or cycling, is an important problem to tackle into the nearby future in Slovakia.

So, a challenge for InnoSchool learning system would be to practice and increase students awareness on environmental issues, such as the citizens mobility in their community.