The Dutch knowledge economy is heavily dependent on highly skilled personnel. This knowledge should not only be easily transferred from their home to their workplace, but should also be allowed to travel to other knowledge hotspots both within and outside the Netherlands. To increase the performance of human capital and thus to maximize the conditions for knowledge sharing and innovation, we need to connect potential talents to knowledge-hubs. On the scale of REOS, this means there is a need for excellent multimodal connections. There are many core locations with highly-valuable knowledge that are currently disconnected from a well-functioning station. On these sites we have to deal with a “first and last mile” problem.
To explore opportunities to improve ‘first’ and ‘last mile’ issues, we analyzed three case studies: the Eindhoven High Tech Campus, The Hague International Zone and Amsterdam Science Park. The three sites are all on the edge of the city, approximately 5km from a national public transport node. The cases show that there isn’t only one ‘first’ and ‘last mile’ problem and also that there isn’t only one solution. The general lessons that we drafted refer to four different scales (international, REOS, city/region and location), four criteria (speed, convenience, comfort, experience) and four different time frames (immediate, mid-long term, long term).
The most important lesson from this study is that designing mobility solutions is not only based on numbers, but also on the return for the knowledge economy. In addition, relatively small changes can yield significant impacts.
Location: Netherlands
Program: Research by Design regarding ´first´ and ´last mile´ problems within the REOS
Year: 2015
Commissioner: Ministerie van Infrastructuur & Milieu
Partners: MUST, Urhan Urban Design, De Zwarte Hond
Design Directors: Eric Frijters, Olv Klijn
Team: Miriam Ram, Magdalena Orzel, Caterina Vetrugno
