Mobility Lab
Measure, decide, verify: mobility assessment in the age of data
Since January 1, 2025, the canton of Geneva has covered the full cost of public transport passes for young people and half the cost for seniors. One year on, the share of beneficiaries riding public transport every day has nearly doubled, from 19% to 37%1. The figure owes nothing to guesswork: more than 6,000 respondents took part in the same survey in December 2024 and again in December 2025. Geneva applied a simple principle: measure before, verify after.
Few organizations afford themselves that opportunity. In companies and municipalities alike, the weightiest mobility decisions, such as parking or contributions toward transit passes, usually rest on the experience of those who make them. Their assumptions are often sound, yet they lack a means of verifying them. This is what data brings to the mobility assessment, the baseline review of staff travel preceding any action plan, with tools once reserved for network planning and now within reach of a single site or local authority. As 2027 budgets take shape, the question is no longer whether measurement is possible, but what it costs to go without it.
A territory measured trip by trip, organizations less well equipped
Every five years, the Confederation surveys more than 55,000 people about their travel; results from the 2025 edition of the Mobility and Transport Microcensus are expected to be published in spring 20272. Greater Geneva, where 4.3 million trips are made each day, relies on a cross-border multimodal model to project its needs through 20503.
What is changing today is not so much the existence of data as the way it is produced and used. Questionnaires have moved from paper to mobile apps; GPS traces, ticketing, access badges, and parking occupancy provide a continuous record of actual practices; analysis is increasingly automated and rendered as maps. Designed for entire metropolitan areas, these tools are now being deployed at the scale of a single company or municipality. One blind spot remains, and it is human: a European report published in late 2025 finds that psychological factors are still the neglected dimension of such initiatives, ranking behind infrastructure, regulation, and incentives4.
On the organizational side, a baseline review remains the exception. In neighboring France, 91% of companies and 79% of local authorities, in their capacity as employers, have no mobility plan5. Without an assessment, decisions are made once and rarely revisited; parking offers the most common example. If the means exist, what data does it take to decide wisely?
What data reveals, what people leave unsaid
A large share of travel escapes introspection. Between 65% and 88% of everyday behaviors are automatic6, and accurately reporting what happens on autopilot is complex, especially when a survey canvasses opinions out of context. French official statistics acknowledge as much: distances traveled are among the variables often poorly known to respondents, to the point of requiring methodological corrections7. Yet a structured self-report on actual journeys (addresses, schedules, trip chains, benefits, constraints, and wishes) retains irreplaceable value: it captures the motivations and barriers that sensors miss. It reveals the why, seldom the precise what.
Passive measurement, observing where self-reporting interrogates, flips the limitation. GPS traces, ticketing, and sensors deliver the what continuously, without the why. Lacking a behavioral lens, the signal is misread: low uptake of a service sometimes reflects a very tangible barrier, a timetable or a connection, rather than a lack of interest. Greater Geneva has already put this cross-referencing into practice: in fall 2022, the survey led by the cantons, partner local authorities, and the region's public transport operators paired an anonymous online questionnaire with a GPS app for volunteers; the first initiative of its scale in nearly a decade, it now feeds the cross-border multimodal model8. Data is a decision-making aid: it does not replace judgment.
One condition remains that neither questionnaires nor sensors guarantee: participation. A baseline survey answered only by those already convinced yields a biased sample, and therefore poorly targeted action. Responding is, moreover, a first step toward engagement. Trust forms the foundation: a stated purpose, data limited to what is necessary, anonymization. The legal framework is converging on both sides of the border, with Switzerland's new data protection act9 echoing the European regulation. With these conditions in place, how does assessment become part of everyday organizational life?
From territory to organization: evidence-based decisions, each at its own scale
No standout tool emerges from these initiatives; frameworks do, sharing one constant: establish a baseline first, decide next, measure the effects last.
Belgium has made it mandatory. Every three years since 2005, each employer there with more than 100 staff has mapped its personnel's travel, site by site, and submitted the findings to its works council10. The 2024-2025 edition, published in spring 2026, covers nearly 1.8 million people, around 40% of the country's salaried workforce. Two decades of measurements reveal what intuition alone could not have established: cycling's share has more than doubled, from 7.8% to 16.5%, while that of the car is slowly declining10. In return, each organization receives a report benchmarking it against its peers.
The canton of Geneva follows the same logic without making it compulsory. For its authorities, a mobility plan begins with "conducting a baseline review of staff mobility practices," before identifying room for improvement and putting measures in place11; a cantonal regulation has encouraged companies to adopt one since 2021. The Ecomobile label, free of charge and valid for five years, requires an assessment in the application file and a review upon renewal; 47 entities had earned it by spring 202612. Transformation is not declared; it is measured.
Greater Geneva has a real-world case in point. In the ZIMEYSAVER industrial zone, straddling Meyrin, Satigny, and Vernier, the sequence is clear: a baseline review presented to companies in November 202413, a roadmap signed the following month, on-street parking regulated by the three municipalities from February 2025, then, a year later, a territorial assessment conducted among company employees to prepare shared shuttles, carpooling, and mobility hubs14. For an SME or a small local authority with no in-house analytical resources, pooling efforts across a business district offers the shortest path to reliable data.
Testing, too, generates data. Initiated and led by the cantonal Department of Health and Mobility and Fondation Modus, with support from several mobility stakeholders, the Déclic Mobilité program invites volunteer households to set aside their vehicle for a month, with guidance from professionals, then evaluates how their practices evolve15. The order of operations is worth reversing: measure first, invest second.
Conclusion
Before its scheme came into force, the canton of Geneva decided, with tpg, to measure mobility practices. A year later, it verified the effects across 128,000 passes16. Measure, decide, verify: an organization can do the same at its own scale, within a single fiscal year, when infrastructure takes years to deliver. Better decisions also mean making better use of the multimodal offer already in place, from the Léman Express to cycling and pedestrian networks, with public transport as its backbone. Employers and municipalities hold the same lever here, ready to be pulled right away.
It is precisely within this logic that evomoov, the multimodal solutions ecosystem designed by tpg, and the approach it champions are rooted: a digital, participatory assessment, decision-support tools to produce and harness mobility data, pilot actions on the ground, and long-term impact measurement. The white paper "Behavioral sciences: a lever for transforming mobility practices" equips organizations to put this into action.
What if your next mobility decision were also the first you measure?
Sources
1. République et canton de Genève. (2026). Prise en charge des abonnements de transports publics : deux expertises confirment et documentent les effets attendus. https://www.ge.ch/document/prise-charge-abonnements-transports-publics-deux-expertises-confirment-documentent-effets-attendus
2. Office fédéral de la statistique et Office fédéral du développement territorial. (2025). Microrecensement mobilité et transports. https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/fr/home/statistiques/mobilite-transports/enquetes/mzmv.html
3. Grand Genève. (2024). Stratégie multimodale transfrontalière 2050. https://www.grand-geneve.org/wp-content/uploads/03_Strategie-multimodale-transfrontaliere_annexe_20062024.pdf
4. EIT Urban Mobility. (2025). Integrating behavioural insights into sustainable mobility planning. https://www.eiturbanmobility.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Final_EITUM_Behaviour_and_Mobility-1.pdf
5. Ministère chargé des transports, ADEME et France Mobilités. (2025). Baromètre Forfait mobilités durables, édition 2025. https://www.francemobilites.fr/outils/ressources/resultats-du-barometre-forfait-mobilites-durables-fmd-edition-2025
6. Rebar, A. L., Vincent, G. E. et Gardner, B. (2025). How habitual is everyday life? An ecological momentary assessment study. Psychology & Health. https://openresearch.surrey.ac.uk/view/pdfCoverPage?instCode=44SUR_INST&filePid=13223855230002346&download=true
7. Centre d'accès sécurisé aux données (CASD) et SDES. (2019). EMP : Enquête Mobilité des Personnes. https://www.casd.eu/source/enquete-mobilite-des-personnes/
8. tpg, cantons de Genève et de Vaud, Région de Nyon, Annemasse Agglo et opérateurs partenaires. (2022). Lancement d'une grande enquête pour mieux comprendre les habitudes de mobilité dans le Grand Genève. Communiqué de presse du 5 septembre 2022. https://www.tpg.ch/sites/default/files/2022-09/20220905%20Communiqu%C3%A9%20de%20presse%20Enqu%C3%AAte%20Grand%20Gen%C3%A8ve.pdf
9. Confédération suisse. (2023). Loi fédérale sur la protection des données (LPD), RS 235.1. https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/2022/491/fr
10. SPF Mobilité et Transports (Belgique). (2026). Enquête fédérale sur les déplacements domicile-travail 2024-2025. https://mobilit.belgium.be/fr/publications/enquete-federale-sur-les-deplacements-domicile-travail-2024-2025-0
11. République et canton de Genève. (2025). Plan de mobilité. https://www.ge.ch/dossier/plan-mobilite-geneve/mobilite-entreprises/plan-mobilite
12. République et canton de Genève. (2026). Label Ecomobile. https://www.ge.ch/dossier/plan-mobilite-geneve/mobilite-entreprises/label-ecomobile
13. Ville de Meyrin. (2024). États des lieux de la mobilité, 28 novembre 2024. https://www.meyrin.ch/sites/default/files/2024-11/Presentation_Etats_des_Lieux_de_la_mobilite_2.pdf
14. Ville de Meyrin. (2025). États des lieux de la mobilité, 6 novembre 2025. https://meyrin.ch/sites/default/files/2025-11/Presentation_Etat_des_LIeux_Mobilite_06.11.2025.pdf
15. Fondation Modus. (2026). Déclic Mobilité. https://www.declic-mobilite.ch/
16. République et canton de Genève. (2026). Prise en charge des abonnements UNIRESO par l'État de Genève : bilan annuel 2025. https://www.ge.ch/dossier/plan-mobilite-geneve/prise-charge-abonnements-unireso-etat-geneve/bilan-annuel-2025