Dundee: Mobility Innovation Living Laboratory (The MILL)

December 11, 2020


Project Overview 

The MILL (Mobility Innovation Living Laboratory) is an innovation partnership between Dundee City Council (DCC) and Urban Foresight. Through its ShareMORE pilot projects, supported by the 8th City ERDF programme, The MILL is developing a range of smart mobility products and data that can be tailored to the specific needs of Dundee citizens, then up-scaled for use in other Scottish cities and further afield. 

The ShareMORE pilot projects include solutions to increase public use of car club vehicles, solutions to optimise corporate fleet by increase shared use of mobility assets and smart parking services. 

The MILL project partners contribute datasets to support the Dundee Open Data Platform (another 8th City project) to enable innovative solutions to be developed. Partners’ real time APIs will feed information to a Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) App being developed as part of the project, with a future iteration integrating and providing payment for different transport services. 

Why is it needed? 

Dundee is an ideal testbed to demonstrate the integration of smart mobility projects and solutions to address many of the complex social and economic challenges facing today’s cities. The Smart Mobility innovations developed at The MILL aim to reduce environmental impacts of transport and improve access to employment and services, delivering positive change to help create better quality of life for citizens. By developing a sustainable transport system, The MILL will provide greater efficiencies for residents and businesses, attract new infrastructure investment and creating economic opportunities that will make Dundee more competitive. 

Impact and Benefits 

The ShareMORE projects are still underway. However, preliminary data shows, for example, that in three months of using six ULEV car club vehicles, Dundee City Council eliminated over 732 car journeys from the road by moving away from spot hiring of vehicles. In addition, smart parking technologies are providing insights on parking sessions, including monthly sessions and parking revenue, enabling parking managers to enhance users’ experience as well as potentially optimising parking assets. 

For more information contact Doug Young, Development Officer (Economic Growth), Dundee City Council – doug.young@dundeecity.gov.uk