From 17 to 19 June 2026, the Share4Equity consortium met in Montréal, Canada, hosted by Polytechnique Montréal and McGill University.
The meeting was an important opportunity to bring the consortium together, take stock of the work carried out so far, and connect the project’s research questions with concrete examples from Montréal’s mobility landscape. Over three days, partners discussed progress across the work packages and exchanged on shared mobility, transport justice, accessibility, governance and policy evaluation.
The internal sessions showed how the different parts of Share4Equity are starting to come together. Partners discussed the analysis of shared mobility supply in different city contexts, ongoing work on user perceptions and mobility behaviour, informal and community-led shared mobility options, and the development of the justice-oriented toolkit. The meeting also opened important discussions on transferability and governance: how lessons from different cities can be compared, and how project results can become useful for public authorities, mobility providers and local communities.
What made the Montréal meeting especially valuable was the connection between research and local practice.On the second day, BIXI Montréal joined the consortium for a dedicated one-hour Q&A on bike-sharing in practice. The exchange allowed partners to ask detailed questions about how the service is planned and operated, how bikes and stations are distributed across the city, what kind of data is collected and used, and how BIXI works with public authorities to adapt the system to local mobility needs.
The consortium also visited LocoMotion, a neighbourhood-based initiative that offers a different way of thinking about shared mobility. What stood out was that the initiative is not framed mainly around providing a service, but around strengthening community ties and making it easier for neighbours to share resources. LocoMotion speaks about borrowing and lending, rather than renting, which reflects the spirit behind the project: shared mobility as a way to support cooperation and everyday life at neighbourhood level.
A further exchange with the City of Montréal brought in the perspective of public authorities.The discussion focused on the current distribution of shared mobility services across the city and how this relates to equity. Partners learned more about what Montréal is currently investigating and testing to make shared mobility services more inclusive, and how questions of service location, accessibility and public policy are being addressed in practice.
Beyond the meeting room, partners explored parts of Montréal’s cycling infrastructure and street reallocation projects.
The Montréal meeting was also a valuable moment for the consortium as a team. A sincere thank you goes to our Canadian partners at Université de Montréal and McGill University, who made the days in Montréal both productive and genuinely enjoyable for the whole group!
The next consortium meeting will be hosted by Politecnico di Milano and will take place in Genoa and Milan