How Voi contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals – SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

At Voi, we’re working every day to serve communities and cities and deliver a safe service that is good for the planet and for all of us that live on it. Back in 2015, the UN set a series of 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to create a sustainable world by 2030. 

We have set targets for nine of these goals and in this post, we’re looking at goal 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities, in particular.

This is the “decade of action” and we’re doubling down on our efforts. For example, Voi has committed $3 million USD to its City Innovation Fund, which will champion innovation for safety, sustainability, and inclusivity in micromobility. The fund promotes research and projects on topics including safe parking infrastructure, equitable access, battery technology, electrification of urban fleets, renewable energy solutions and many more.

But let’s look at UN SDG 11 in particular – Sustainable Cities and Communities. What is this goal and what are we doing about it?

SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

This goal aims to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. This is Voi’s raison d’être. Our mission is to bring safe, reliable and sustainable mobility to everyone. Evidence shows that we need to promote active mobility and alternatives to cars to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, air and noise pollution and to create healthier, fairer and more accessible cities. 

What we have done so far: 

• Accessible net-zero transport: We have provided over 42 million emission-free rides to our 6 million users. Since January 2020, we are carbon neutral in all the 50+ cities that we operate in. 
• Replacing car trips and saving CO2: Our user surveys show 14-21% of our trips replace cars. We estimate our service has avoided over 5 million car trips since day one. In 2020, we avoided over 600 tonnes of CO2 equivalents, according to our carbon calculator developed with a transport modeller from UCL’s MaaS Lab. We are fostering more car replacement, for example, we are working with the University of Warwick to incentivise Coventry users to reduce their private car use.  
• Supporting public transport: We have also improved access to transit, with 63% of users reporting that they combine e-scooters with local public transport. 
• Tackling pollutants: Beyond measuring CO2, we also track other harmful emissions that impact air pollution, soil acidification, and photochemical ozone formation. 
• Co-creation with communities: We engage our user base, including vulnerable groups to create inclusive, safe and net zero urban transport options. (SDG 11.3). 

Our targets: 

• Inclusive transport: We aim to serve more cities and provide access to safe, affordable, and sustainable rides to more people. We aim to do this by promoting and helping with micro-mobility within historically underserved communities and with older generations, women and lower-income groups. (SDG 11.2)  
• Supporting public transport: We’re committed to supporting the increase of the public transport passenger share by making it easy to use different modes of transport. (SDG 11.a) 

• Fostering car replacement: We aim to design our service to nudge users towards sustainable mobility habits and increase our car-replacement rate by 20% year on year until 2025. (SDG 11.2.1). 

Did you know? 

If you want to find out more about all our work with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, take a look back at our 2019 Sustainability Statement when we began aligning to the goals. We’ve come a long way but there’s so much more to do. 

This blog post is part of a series on how we work with nine of the 17 sustainable development goals. You can find the other blog posts in the series here:

SDG 9: Sustainable Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
SDG 13: Climate Action
SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
SDG 5: Gender Equality
SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing
SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals