ENDURANCE e-update September 2014
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What kind of city do we want to live in? The answer to that question forms the starting point of each Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (S.U.M.P.). A S.U.M.P. vision establishes a common understanding of what the city should be like in the future. In this e-update we will have a look at the different choices that cities make in their visions. But first we start with an update on recent ENDURANCE activities.

Newsflash: EPOMM’s modal split database TEMS has improved, and so has MaxEva! Scroll down to learn more.

 

The ENDURANCE networks are growing


Click on the picture to enlarge

A recent big event in which ENDURANCE participated was the first European Conference on S.U.M.P. in Sopot, Poland. All presentations are available on the ENDURANCE website. At the conference, the European Commission announced the creation of a European Platform on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans that will be integrated into the existing Eltis website.

In conjunction with the conference, the ENDURANCE National Focal Points (NFP) had their annual NFP workshop to discuss their progress within the project. It showed that many cities find it still hard to convince local politicians of the merits of the S.U.M.P. approach. The full list of S.U.M.P. Guidelines can be rather overwhelming and it is still not well understood that a S.U.M.P. process builds on existing planning practices and outcomes. The NFP workshop also had several small-scale policy transfers between countries following the EPOMM policy transfer approach.

The ENDURANCE website features many cities that have shown interest in the S.U.M.P. approach or that are involved in SUM planning in various different stages. The ENDURANCE national focal points will help these cities exchange experiences and offer them support for any information or training needs they have. They also organise annual national meetings to discuss S.U.M.P.-related topics. Most NFPs have organised their first event in the course of the past year and are now planning the second meeting.

 

A vision for the future


After the preparatory phase (see the S.U.M.P. Guidelines), building a common vision for the future is the first main step in the development of the actual S.U.M.P.. An essential feature of a S.U.M.P. vision is that it stretches beyond the term of a legislature. In the Swedish city of Lund, work on the S.U.M.P. (known as LundaMaTs) began as early as 1996, but the vision and the goals of the plan are set for 2030. “A municipality is a politically-managed organisation, and as such it is easy to slip into the routine of setting goals based on what can be achieved during a mandate period,” says Chief Executive Officer Jan-Inge Ahlfridh. "The more radical the changes, the more you have to think long-term." (LundaMaTs II – Strategy for a sustainable transport system for Lund 2030, p. 2)

Each city’ vision takes into account the specific features and challenges of the local situation. But they all (should) revolve around a central question: how to assure and improve quality of life for citizens and visitors. Let's have a look at the S.U.M.P. visions of some of the cities in the ENDURANCE network and the process that has led them to an agreement on these visions.

 

Ruse: Reconciling economic growth with preservation of cultural and natural heritage




The first national ENDURANCE event in Bulgaria took place in October last year and was met with a lot of enthusiasm. No less than 16 cities have already joined the Bulgarian ENDURANCE network. One of them is Ruse.

Ruse is a city of great importance in the Danube region, because of its rich cultural heritage and its religious and ethnic diversity. The city has set itself a vision for development as a modern European city and an attractive tourist destination. They want to build a fair, economically viable, environmentally friendly and health-promoting mobility and tourism system, while preserving the natural and cultural heritage and taking care of the sensitive Danube ecosystems. At the same time, the city’s development should offer new chances for green economy and green jobs in the region.

The vision and the list of the necessary measures to be implemented were developed by CSDCS, the ENDURANCE NFP for Bulgaria, in close collaboration with municipal experts and representatives of the Ruse Energy Agency. The Tourist Information Center was also consulted. During two Public Discussions in the Spring of 2014, the vision and measures were scrutinized by more than 100 transport and tourism stakeholders, environmentalists and NGO representatives, and priorities were determined. This process took about 9 months. There was a wide-spread communication of the vision and the measures to citizens, using the municipal website, workshops and presentations at local events, and several press conferences with coverage in the written press and on television.

 

Lille: Changing behaviour to counteract saturation






In Lille Métropole, France, the most recent PDU (plan de déplacements urbains, French version of the European S.U.M.P.) was adopted in 2011, after 5 years of collaborative elaboration. An important moment of the process was the “Great debate” on mobility, organized in 2009 by Martine Aubry, president of the Urban Community of Lille. It gathered experts, institutions, associations and the public, and resulted in the publication ‘Engager la Métropole Lilloise vers la mobilité du 21ème siècle’ (‘to engage the Lille metropolis in the mobility of the 21st century’). After this important high level political commitment, further consultation resulted in the objectives and measures of the PDU.

The city’s vision revolves around a notion of sustainable development where habitat, economy and transport are conceived together. After introducing the world’s first automated metro system in the 80s and a period of reinforcement of public transport on the surface in the years 2000, the public transport strategy now has to change, to cope with the increasing number of travellers (+50% in 10 years).

In order to create a ‘post-carbon’ metropolis, Lille Métropole has set itself very ambitious objectives of modal shift (see figures below for targets by 2020 as compared to 2006).

To reach these objectives, the PDU plans 170 measures organized under 6 themes. To read more, see the Lille page on the ENDURANCE website and the “key elements of the PDU” in French.

 

Kaunas: Reviving the historic old town



Photo by Vygintas

In Kaunas, Lithuania, the vision of mobility for the future is based on the newly devised City Master Plan (2013-2023). The main themes are to reduce private car usage, to increase quality and quantity of public transport journeys, substantial increase and improvement to the city’s cycling infrastructure, and a revival of the historic old town including a rethink on city parking.

Development of the Master Plan included public presentations. Previous EU mobility-related projects helped to develop a good cooperation with multi-stakeholder community groups. “There are a few media articles and events, and some areas of the Master Plan will attract more interest than other areas of course,” says Jim McGeever from UAB - TAEM Urbanistai, the ENDURANCE national focal point in Lithuania. “But regular campaigns and promotional activities would be a great help to maintain the public interest in how the city develops its 10-year vision. This is clearly an area that we are keen to improve upon.”

 

Dresden: creating unanimous support among different stakeholders

Round Table meeting in 2010 (Urban Planning Office)

In Dresden, Germany, the development process for the "Transport Development Plan 2025plus" (TDP) started in Autumn 2009. From the very first beginning the Round Table has been the central committee in the planning process. Moderated by an independent planning office, it consisted of representatives from 46 organisations, professional associations, chambers, lobbies, the city administration and representatives from all parties of Dresden City Council. Four working groups were formed, in which round table members with similar views and ideas worked together:

  • City administration TDP project group;
  • Public Transport Providers;
  • Other Social Interests and Urban Quality;
  • Traffic & Transport and Business Associations.

Each working group developed their visions. A discussion process of 4 months with many interactions between the groups led the Round Table to an agreement on a consensual vision of all stakeholders. In 2011 the Dresden City Council adopted the proposal with some modifications.

This vision, ‘Dresden aims for future traffic development ’, is the basis for the development of the Dresden S.U.M.P. It considers transport not as an end in itself, but as a way to improve residents’ mobility and to support the economy and postulates a free choice of transport modes. The vision places much emphasis on a balance between economic, ecological and social considerations, and on an open planning process that is based on consensus. The vision has been communicated via website, official journal, special TDP newsletter and public discussion forums.

 

News from related projects



In May, the CASCADE project came to an end. It supported knowledge sharing between cities and capacity building at the local level in order to close the gap between cities’ energy-efficiency ambitions and reality. The project website has a toolkit for organising peer-to-peer learning between cities and a collection of best practices. Some highlights:

 

Newsflash: TEMS improved


EPOMM has embarked on improving The EPOMM Modal Split Tool (TEMS) .

  • It is now better explained why modal split is so important and why TEMS is so helpful in benchmarking, comparing and measuring changes;
  • The map has now so-called clustered markers providing a better overview;
  • You can compare and export all cities in the database – great for analysis;
  • You should be able to find modal split through a search engine, simply type the name of the city and “modal split”;
  • When uploading data, you can provide specific info on the survey method and area, making future comparisons more reliable;
  • Some obviously wrong data have been eliminated, and some other slight improvements in the usability have been implemented.

In a next step countries and cities (hopefully also from ENDURANCE) should upload the data of cities that are still missing (well over 50% of all cities above 100.000 inhabitants are already in, but it means that still almost 50% are missing). The EPOMM-member countries have made an action plan to make TEMS better known and to upload missing and new modal split data of cities as well as of countries.

EPOMM is also working on the improvement of the evaluation and benchmarking tool MaxEva – more about that in the next e-update.

The monitoring fits well to the upcoming SUMP-award with the theme “monitoring implementation to improve the SUMP”, see below.

 

Upcoming events
 

For more events, please visit the EPOMM Calendar.
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