Mobility vision helps in making more sustainable choices

21 January 2025 News item

On 3 December 2024, the Executive Board adopted the university's mobility vision. Nathan Hooghof, mobility adviser at Campus Development, explains what prompted this and why it is important that this vision document has come now.

Nathan: 'Until now, there was no vision on mobility. Decisions on things like parking, logistics and travel to campus, were made without an overarching vision. The current vision document reflects what Radboud University stands for in relation to mobility: how do we want the university to be and remain accessible to everyone, what do we want to encourage and how will we do it?'

Substantial challenges

'There are several reasons for drafting the vision document, but sustainability is one of the main drivers. With mobility, we emit a lot of CO2 on campus. Since the university takes its own sustainability policy seriously, it therefore had to do something about this. Another concrete reason is 'Duurzaam Bereikbaar Heijendaal'. In this, we work together with the municipality and campus partners. There are considerable challenges to keep the campus accessible. After all, the city of Nijmegen is growing, with more and more people and jobs. But there is less room for cars. So the question is: how do we offer more alternatives to get to the campus? In any case, this requires good facilities and public transport connections. The municipality will have to play a role in this, but so will we ourselves.'

STOMP principle

Central to the vision is the STOMP principle, which is the order in which we want to design the campus. The letters in Dutch stand for walking, cycling, public transport, mobility services (such as shared cars) and private car. With this principle, we give more priority to sustainable and active forms of mobility. Nathan: 'We prefer to see travelling with active mobility, with walking and cycling. People who live in the city or up to 15 kilometres in the circumference, are also often faster on campus by bike or e-bike than by car. We want to encourage this and design everything for that. On campus, you still see big signs indicating where you can go by car. For cyclists, on the other hand, it is difficult to find where the bicycle parking facilities are. That's exactly the opposite of what we want. And Heyendaalseweg is a wide road with lots of space for cars, a bus lane and a small bicycle lane. We want to make this road much better and safer for cyclists in the future. That it is guided very well in signage and with good, safe cycle lanes.'

How to proceed now?

'We are going to develop the vision into policy. There will not be a single policy plan but separate policies for different issues such as logistics, parking and travel arrangements. All these issues have their own pace of development. For example, for bicycle parking it is already very clear, the goal is to have more of it. But for logistics, it is a bit more complicated. We know we want fewer and 'cleaner' trucks on campus. But how are we going to do this and in what way? Are we going to work with window times, for example? Or will we let everything come to one place (HUB)? These are choices we still have to make. This also applies to the travel expenses scheme, which we will discuss with HR, and about the parking scheme, which we will coordinate with the Facility Management department.'

More sustainable choices

'It is important that the mobility vision came about,' says Nathan. 'We are now all moving in the same direction. The vision helps make the elaboration into policy good; after all, we now know what the long-term goals are. With our Campus Development team, we want to support everyone involved in mobility. This way, we help staff and students make more sustainable mobility choices. This gives direction to the campus of the future and allows everyone to contribute to it to the maximum extent.'

Contact information

Organizational unit: Campus & Facilities