“If we continue to work with the traditional approach, we will not manage to reach the Paris Agreement targets.”- Neri Di Volo, European Investment Bank - Jaspers
Thinking outside the box and working in innovative ways seems to be the key to solving many of the problems we are currently facing. In the case of urban mobility, this rule prevails. Cities have been working for years on designing Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) to satisfy the mobility needs of people and businesses, while ensuring a better quality of life, focusing on citizens and users rather than on vehicles. The involvement of citizens and stakeholders, and the coordination of policies across different sectors like energy and climate are necessary elements in the design of SUMPs.
Sustainable mobility and climate neutrality
During the webinar “Joint planning through SUMPs and SECAPs towards a zero-emission mobility in cities”, Neri di Volo and Alan O’Brien, from the European Investment Bank, offered some explanation to why this is happening and what the next steps for sustainable urban mobility should be. The three-step process recommended by the EIB experts for a successful SUMP must be based on (1) optimization, (2) shifting to environmentally friendly goals, and (3) planning. For several years, cities have been focusing their efforts on the first two steps and forgetting the most important part – the planning level.
When SUMPs were starting to be implemented, they were not yet focusing on climate mitigation. It was only in 2018, after the Paris Agreement, that Member States started developing their National Energy and Climate Plans. From that moment on SUMPs started integrating energy and emission reduction measures. However, a common mistake spotted by the EIB experts is the lack of preliminary assessment on the technical feasibility of the targets. For instance, the relationship between the electrification of bus fleets and the energy grid of a city.
“If you close one street in a city, it may not affect the most immediate streets. Nevertheless, if one looks at it from a metropolitan perspective, the effects of closing a street can be much bigger than initially imagined.” warned O’Brien.
The example of Bologna (IT)
Bologna is the perfect example of such a scenario. The SUMP of Bologna is characterized by covering not only the main city, but the metropolitan area – composed of 55 municipalities. This decision was based on the preconception that covering just Bologna would not tackle the main obstacles, nor achieve its main targets. Taking into consideration that half of the cars that go through the city come from the metropolitan area, it was decided that both the SUMP and the Territorial and Urban Plan should be led by the Metropolitan authority.
The representative of the city, Alessandro Delpiano, explained that the most difficult part of coordinating these two plans together with 54 other municipalities was to coordinate between politicians, scientists, and technical offices of the different municipalities. In the end, over 7,000 people were involved in this process through citizens’ online surveys, stakeholders working tables, meetings shared by unions of municipalities.
The example of Budapest (HU)
Similarly, Budapest brought forward a successful case study of alignment between SUMPs and SECAPs (Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan). Since 2018, the city has been working on achieving the greatest possible coherence between the various plans in the city, to effectively achieve a reduction of 40% of GHG emissions by 2030. According to Tünde Hajnal, mobility expert at the Centre for Budapest Transport, the City’s Public transport company, the key aspects that brought real change into the city are the development of planning projects, and an investment programme. A statement that goes in line with the perspective brought in by the EIB.
Moreover, the SECAP of Budapest also incorporates special mobility measures aimed at enhancing transport performance. Improvement of transport infrastructure and environmentally friendly modes of transport, improvement of public transport, and integrated mobility services with digitalization are some of the mobility elements that the city has incorporated in their SECAP.
You can rewatch the webinar here
Learn more about sustainable mobility in our publication “Policy Options to Reduce Emissions from the Mobility Sector: Inspiring Examples and Learning Opportunities”.
Details
- Publication date
- 20 October 2023