university hospitals, and specialized research institutes. It sharing chain: the OV-fiets (which means “public transit bike”). contributes to and finances projects that aim to revolutionize This system provides citizens with the opportunity to take an the health sector in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. OV-bike from nearly any train station in the Netherlands. As a result, people traveling across the country or from one end of The Amsterdam Science & Innovation Award has beenAmsterdam to another can still use a bike for the last part of created to recognize the most innovative ideas generated by their trip. This service is fully integrated into the public transit Amsterdam’s universities and research institutes. One winner system, and users can pay for it with the same card they use to of the award is the Dolce Vita project, which is addressing pay for travel by trains, trams, buses, and metros. bottlenecks in elderly care and facilitating the development of an integrated and coordinated approach to planning at Amsterdam City Council has prioritized a multimodal approach the macrolevel. Another project developed by AHTI focuses to public transport services and to reducing carbon emissions. on HIV/AIDS; it aims to trace people who have been infected In an interview conducted by Aseniya Diminitrova, Frans with HIV but are not aware of their HIV-positive status. Using a Anton Vermast, a Senior Strategy Advisor for Low Carbon and geographic information system, the project maps current and Connected Urban Planning at Amsterdam Smart City (Aseniya future HIV infections and specific risk areas in Amsterdam. This Dimitrova, 2018), emphasized the importance of mobility to data is facilitating improvements in testing and interventions Amsterdam’s efforts to develop into a smart city. He said, (H-Team, 2020). “Smart mobility even goes off-road and into the water with developments such as Roboat, a futuristic and autonomous 2. Mobility robot boat that multi-tasks as a taxi, bridge, floating stage, waste collector and freight transporter, depending on what A smart city’s main aim is to improve citizens’ lives. What better residents and the city need” (Aseniya Dimitrova, 2018). way to do so than by improving mobility and giving them more time in their day? By making a city’s mobility smarter and more efficient, citizens’ daily commute times can be reduced significantly. Because Amsterdam is known as the world’s biking capital, many would not think this city also needs innovative and smart mobility solutions. Besides its globally renowned biking infrastructure, Amsterdam is creating and implementing digital mobility solutions focused on areas such as provision of public transit information, bike and car sharing, and smart parking platforms (Arthur D. Little, 2018). Amsterdam has more bicycles (nine hundred thousand) than it does people (eight hundred thousand) (Dam, 2017). Biking is the most common form of transport in this city, with a daily mode share of 48 percent (Sutton, 2017). Dutch city planners have become experts in the “classic” mobility feat of creating excellent street design and cycling infrastructure. Still, they are open to new services that further improve biking mobility—for example, bike sharing, a global innovation now available in over 712 cities (Shaheen et al., 2015). 2.1 Public transport and traffic congestion Although nearly all Dutch citizens already own a bike, the concept of bike sharing has become common throughout the Amsterdam faces many challenges: rapid development of Netherlands. The classic bike-sharing scheme consists in the city area (sprawl) and a sustained increase in tourist making a stock of bikes available throughout a city for citizens numbers. These two phenomena affect the way in which to use and deposit at designated stations. As Dutch citizens people move around in the city, because they have the following already have bikes for daily trips, the country adapted the consequences (Deloitte City Mobility Index 2020): classic bike-sharing model to make it better fit Dutch needs. • An increase in traffic volumes is creating an increased risk The railway operator NS has implemented a countrywide bike- of traffic accidents; 65 Quélin and Smadja | HEC PARIS | SMART CITIES | The sustainable program of six leading cities | 2021