4th European Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans
On 29-30 March 2017, nearly 400 participants from the fields of transport planning and development, research and politics gathered in Dubrovnik for the Fourth European Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans to discuss new planning approaches and strategies, and to share ideas, solutions and success stories. Three plenary sessions, 12 presentation sessions with more than 35 presentations, 4 challenge sessions, 7 site visits, and a Market Place for EU-funded projects and initiatives, helped to gather ideas, share visions, exchange knowledge and encourage further cooperation.
The conference showed that intelligent planning for sustainable mobility puts people first! And "Intelligent Planning for Sustainable Mobility" was the theme of the 4th European Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans that took place on 29-30 March 2017 in Dubrovnik, Croatia. This main theme of the conference was addressed by experts in interactive sessions centred around four key topics: ‘The big picture’, ‘Making the SUMP framework more effective’, ‘The integration and innovation challenge’ and ‘Planning techniques’.
The session "Freight transport and SUMPs" gavean overview of the impacts of freight transport in urban areas and of the solutions to make city logistics a part of the SUMP process for a smarter and greener urban environment. All presenters highlighted the importance of re-thinking the urban freight transport from a classic, truck, van and lorry based delivery system to a series of intelligent, eco-friendly and SUMP compatible cargo solutions.
Wulf-Holger Arndt (DIFU, Berlin) demonstrated the problems caused by urban commercial traffic. Commercial traffic causes delivery problems by occupying roadsides, bus stops, parking or biking lanes, blocking junctions and sidewalks. When planning urban mobility in a sustainable way, solutions must be given by planners for these problems issued of classic freight transport approach to be applied as daily routines by most of the cities.
Michael Browne (University of Gothenburg) explained to what extent a business model is relevant for longer term improvements in urban mobility planning. The actions based on the model combine solutions and improved understanding, integrated approaches to make sure mobility and freight are considered together from the start of the planning, a healthy scale to build and reinforce networks, and the behavioural change to look for good practices. A strong and multi-purpose model might improve the planning process regarding urban logistics.
Karl Reiter (FGM AMOR, Graz) highlighted that half of the motorized trips related to goods transport should be shifted to bikes and cargo bikes. 25% of deliveries, 50% of private or public service trips and 77% of shopping purposes should be implemented by bikes or cargo bikes. Cycle logistics have great potential in cities and more and more systems have been appeared for renting or permanently using cargo bikes in urban logistics. This method is more efficient and in many cases quicker in densely built urban areas, greener and smarter than motorised modes with classic deliveries or lorry based services.
Further information and all presentations are available via www.eltis.org.
Should you have any enquiries related to the 4th European Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans, please contact the SUMP conference secretariat at SUMPConference [at] mobiel21 [dot] be
This conference was organised by CIVITAS PROSPERITY, a member of the European Platform on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans.
