Sustainable Policy RespOnse to Urban mobility Transition

Project Information

SPROUT

Grant agreement ID: 814910

DOI

10.3030/814910

Project closed

EC signature date 6 May 2019

Start date 1 September 2019

End date 28 February 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 4 412 553,75

EU contribution

€ 3 865 116,25

Coordinated by

FUNDACION ZARAGOZA LOGISTICS CENTER
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SPROUT (Sustainable Policy RespOnse to Urban mobility Transition)

Reporting period: 2021-03-01 to 2023-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Europe’s urban population is expected to increase from 73% in 2014 to over 80% in 2050. As the world continues to urbanise, sustainable development challenges will be increasingly concentrated in cities. The changing urban mobility environment places a considerable challenge for urban policymaking as little is known about changing user needs. Also, the new business models do not fit clearly within the existing rules, and their impacts or benefits s are still unclear. Cities, rather than national governments, are more likely to lead change and innovation in the transport system, as they have more regulatory freedom to deal with innovative transport providers, are better aware of the city-specific innovation aspects, and can at the same time stimulate urban mobility innovation and ensure the delivery of social benefits.

Previously tested and implemented policy responses employing access restrictions, congestion charging or infrastructure provision, are not adequate to address the changes underway. Therefore, a new, city-led innovative policy response that considers all limitations and shortcomings is required.

To address the challenges and to reach the expected impacts of LC-MG-1-3-2018, SPROUT aims to produce new and practice-based knowledge & tools to navigate urban mobility policy through transition and contribute to evidence-based policymaking. To achieve its aim, the project will pursue the following project objectives through a 3-layer cities’ engagement approach:
1. Understand the transition in European urban mobility (passengers and freight)
2.Foresee and determine the impact of urban mobility drivers on urban policy.
3.Formulate a city-led innovative policy response widely applicable to European cities to navigate transition.
4.Provide tools to contribute to evidence-based policy-making and enhance local policy-making capacity.
5.Navigate future policy by channelling project results into future EU policy initiatives.

The five objectives crystalize in the SPROUT Transition Path to City-Led Innovative Mobility Planning, 8 steps for cities to successfully promote sustainable urban development (image).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

SPROUT progressed in its objectives as follows:

• Understanding transition in urban mobility. SROUT developed an inventory of the factors that are used by each of the SPROUT cities as a common framework to collect and integrate data. This allowed the project to get an overview of the urban mobility situation in the 1st and 2nd -layer SPROUT cities, and overview of the urban mobility transition drivers and their level of importance, and an overview of the locally relevant stakeholders.

• Determining the impacts of emerging urban mobility environments. To come to appropriate city-led policy responses in the later stages of the project, SPROUT developed city-specific ‘do-nothing’ scenarios for 2030 that describe the possible development of the urban mobility system in the 1st-layer cities if no new policies are introduced to harness the transition of the 5 future city-specific scenarios were co-created following a cross-impact balance analysis and participatory approaches. Their sustainability and policy impacts were also assessed.

• Formulating a city-led innovative policy response, widely applicable to European cities, to navigate urban mobility in transition. City-specific policy responses to ten different mobility solutions (for passengers and freight) were developed. Afterwards, policy measures were bundled together based on their commonalities using 5 pillars’ guiding questions and patterns identified to form policy packages. Pillars are: better understanding, better regulation, better financing, better data and better infrastructure.

• Providing tools to contribute to evidence-based policy-making and enhance local policy-making capacity.
SPROUT developed three policy support tools: innovation readiness index, liveability index and Evidence-based early policy alert & action tracker. An open shared data space produced contains a minimum set of data needed to drive urban mobility policy-making in general and make informed decisions about the implementation of innovative urban mobility solutions in particular. Three e-learning courses, a webinar and two workshops were carried out and provided to all project cities.
• Navigating future policy by channelling project results into future EU policy initiatives.
Based on the project results, SPROUT produced a recommendation for SUMP guide revision. Also, a European strategy to navigate urban mobility policy through transition and an International cooperation agenda with China and the US.

Despite COVID, the consortium spread the project outputs across the globe (not forgetting to translate the results into local languages). For the SPROUT Tools, a short/medium-term exploitation pathway has been designed.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The ambition of SPROUT is to guide cities along the policy cycle and to go beyond the state of the art in understanding and responding to the impacts of new mobility innovations on policymaking. With this aim, SPROUT developed the Transition Path to City-Led Innovative Mobility Planning, 8 steps for cities to successfully promote sustainable urban development (image).
Firstly, the cities need to have a clear view of how to proceed with the transition to innovative mobility, which are the main elements that best characterize an innovative mobility system (step 1).
Next, the city needs to gain a deep understanding of its current situation in terms of i) the current levels of readiness in harnessing innovation (step 2) as well as ii) the city’s performance in terms of sustainability (step 3). From this analysis the cities will gain valuable insights into their strong and weak points and where further actions are needed (step 4).
For those four first steps, the SPROUT urban policy model tool and more specifically the Innovation Readiness Self-Assessment Tool and Liveability Self-Assessment Tool have been developed and provided to the cities by SPROUT as important urban policy planning facilitators.
Cities can then estimate their future state in a potential do-nothing scenario as well as identify through past evidence the potential appropriate policy responses for accompanying an innovative mobility solution and reassuring its’ positive impact on the economy, the society and the environment. (Step 5). SPROUT provided a set of tools for supporting the identification of the appropriate policy response such as the SPROUT’s System Dynamics Tool which provides a data-driven tool for helping the cities in testing different policy responses and identifying their cost to society, the economy and the environment and the SPROUT Toolbox which provides practical guidance to city officials steering the mobility transition that cities face (Step 6). Following the lessons that have been learned from other cities together with the cities’ unique city typology and main strong and weak points, the seventh step of the transition path is to prepare the appropriate policy response package and select the measures to be implemented. Indicative guidance actions that lie under this step are the update/integration of current SUMP, the development of SULP where it is needed, the development of Policy Briefs as well as the Guidance provided by this EU Roadmap. Finally, monitoring the development of the transition and tracking the achievement of goals is crucial, which can be done through the Action Tracker.

Transition guidance