The project team organised a workshop on older people’s mobility at this year's ECOMM conference in Graz, Austria. After a short introduction to the AENEAS project by Matthias Fiedler (Rupprecht Consult), participants were posed with some real challenges. “Dressed up” with special glasses, earplugs, gloves and ankle-weights to produce typical age-related constraints, workshop participants had to complete an obstacle course, stamp their ticket and negotiate a bus timetable. This “life experience”, arranged and introduced by ZGB’s Susanne Schinagl, helped to raise awareness of challenges that older people face when riding public transport. Afterwards, Angelika Gasteiner from Salzburg AG StadtBus presented her company’s training and communication activities geared to older clients, and later showed a short movie.

The third part of the workshop consisted of a presentation from Johanna Balthesen on Munich’s Individualised Travel Marketing Campaign. Angelika and Matthias supported this with some short dramatic sequences illustrating an older couple dealing with the mobility information package they received from the Lord Mayor. Audience receptions to the entire workshop have been extremely positive, and a couple of participants expressed interest in implementing similar schemes in their cities.


Author: Matthias Fiedler