Sustainable Urban Mobility – Procurement of Electric Minibuses

1. Project Overview & Key Data

• Applicant: City of Kaštela, Croatia

• DUT Pathway: 15-Minute City (15mC)

• Project Role: Pilot City / Co-Applicant

• Call ID: DUT Call 2026

2. Background & Challenge

The City of Kaštela is a unique, mid-sized coastal municipality in Croatia, stretching linearly along the Adriatic coast. This distinctive geographical layout presents severe urban mobility challenges. The city is experiencing high car dependency, traffic congestion, and rising CO2 emissions from the transport sector.

Public transport coverage remains limited, leaving peripheral and peri-urban neighborhoods disconnected from central amenities. Ensuring accessible, low-carbon mobility for all residents is a critical bottleneck. The city's sustainable development agenda requires immediate action to provide equitable transport access while rapidly reducing its local carbon footprint.

3. Proposed Initiative: Investment-Ready Pilot

To directly confront these challenges, Kaštela proposes a concrete, investment-ready pilot activity: the procurement and operational deployment of two (2) electric minibuses.

Unlike purely theoretical projects, this initiative focuses on rapid local deployment with clear, measurable outcomes. The electric minibuses will be strategically integrated into the local transit network to target:

• Emission Reductions: Direct elimination of tailpipe carbon emissions from municipal transit lines.

• Equitable Access: Connecting underserved, peri-urban residential pockets to essential transport nodes and urban centers.

• Modal Shift: Incentivizing a shift from private internal combustion engine (ICE) cars to clean public transit.

• Local Action: Demonstrating the technical and economic viability of zero-emission municipal mobility at the local government level.

4. Alignment with the DUT 15-Minute City Pathway

The 15-Minute City concept emphasizes that essential services, daily necessities, and robust mobility options should be accessible to all urban residents within a short walking, cycling, or transit trip.

Kaštela’s project actively advances this pathway by shortening the "temporal distance" to micro-mobility and traditional transit links. The electric minibuses serve as a crucial flexible feeder network. They bridge the gap in low-density zones where standard buses are inefficient, reducing reliance on private vehicles for daily errands, and providing a scalable blueprint for small and medium-sized European coastal cities facing similar geographic constraints.

5. Role & Contributions within a Transnational DUT Consortium

As a Pilot City and Co-Applicant, Kaštela offers a distinct "living lab" environment for European research, technology, and social innovation partners. Within a transnational project framework, the city will actively facilitate:

• Scientific Evaluation: Working with academic partners to apply rigorous methodologies for measuring ridership, energy efficiency, and emission reductions.

• Cross-City Benchmarking: Sharing real-time operational data, success metrics, and deployment hurdles with European partner cities.

• Replication & Knowledge Transfer: Documenting the procurement, grid-integration, and routing strategies to create transferable toolkits for other municipalities.

• Policy & Strategy Uptake: Utilizing pilot data to update local Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) and influence national frameworks for green public procurement.

6. Expected Outcomes & Impact Metrics

• Fleet Modernization: Two fully operational, zero-emission electric minibuses successfully integrated into the municipal network within the project lifecycle.

• Decarbonization: A calculated, verifiable decrease in localized greenhouse gas emissions.

• Social Inclusion: Measurable growth in public transport ridership, specifically mapping higher trip satisfaction and increased mobility access among vulnerable or previously isolated demographics.

• Transferability: A finalized, evidence-based urban mobility model ready for replication across comparable medium-sized European cities.