The Impact of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans

The overall objective of the SUITS project (Sustainable Urban Integrated Transport Systems) is to enhance the capacity of small and medium local authorities to develop and implement sustainable urban transport and mobility measures. The policy brief discusses the importance of SUMPs for sustainable mobility. The Briefing finds that the existence of a "Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan" (SUMP) is indeed linked to a higher share of sustainable modes of transport. Cities with SUMPs have a higher public transport share than cities without SUMP. However, the existence of a SUMP does not as yet have a significant impact on the overall share of non-motorised modes. Based on its analysis, the Policy Brief provides recommendations for the EU and its member states. In a further step, possible reasons for the gap between ambition and reality are discussed.

SUITS is a CiViTAS project, which is a network of cities dedicated to cleaner, better transport in Europe and beyond. CiViTAS argues that a SUMP is an important part of sustainable urban transport innovations. A SUMP is a strategic transport plan which helps cities to deliver on their sustainability objectives by outlining the city's transport and mobility measures.

SUITS first Policy Brief by Dr. Frederic Rudolph (Research Group Energy, Transport and Climate Policy, Wuppertal Institute) and Matthias Damert (University of Graz, guest researcher at the Wuppertal Institute) is available under the following link.