On 4 April 2019, the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region approved "Good Move", the regional mobility plan for the period until 2028.
The plan focuses on safety and quality of life by focusing on making neighbourhoods car-free, improving public transport, reducing private car ownership and better managing incoming car traffic. Specifically, the plan aims to reduce car use by 24% and quadruple the number of bicycle trips.
Why a new plan
By 2030, the Portuguese Government aims to boost cycling mobility throughout the country and is going to pursue this objective by making it compulsory for children to learn how to ride their bikes at primary school. This is one of the 51 measures foreseen in the National Strategy for Active Mobility, recently presented by António Costa, Portuguese Minister of the Environment and José Mendes, Deputy Secretary of State and Mobility at the city of Barreiro.
On 15 April 2019, the Polish Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Mr. Andrzej Bittel officially presented the CIVITAS PROSPERITY Guide to developing a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) to representatives of more than 140 cities and stakeholders. The Guide has been prepared within the framework of the national SUMP Task Force working group and is therefore tailored to national conditions in Poland.
Air quality is a relevant problem in most extended urban areas in Italy, particularly the ones located in the Northern part of the country. This is what emerged from the recent report (“Mal’aria 2019”) published by Legambiente. Although the annual average has improved over the last decade, peaks in concentrations of fine particulate matter and ozone remain high, especially in winter and summer months. In 2018, 55 departmental capitals exceeded their daily limits for fine particulate matter and ozone (fixed at 35 days for PM10 and 25 for ozone).
In an attempt to combat congestion and air pollution, Milan has limited city access further for petrol and diesel vehicles. With an area covering approximately 72% of the entire municipal territory, “Area B” is now Italy’s largest low emission zone.
“Area B” is a region of 97.6% of the city’s resident population (almost 1.4 million inhabitants). It impacts all those who enter the city by motor vehicle every day, steadily and progressively restricting the most polluting ones in a bid to enhance air quality.
The calls for contributions, exhibitors and sponsors are now open for this year's CIVITAS Forum.
The 17th edition of Europe's top sustainable urban mobility event will gather the leading figures in the field to debate and analyse the most pressing mobility topics and witness the pioneering solutions bringing cleaner, better transport to Europe.
The Swedish government has announced a 4.7 million euro investment in night-time rail connections to continental Europe.
Over the past few decades, night-time train services have been cut across Europe due to the harsh competition from budget airlines and high-speed trains, which have made overnight train rides unnecessary on most routes.
March 2019 saw the launch of what is to become one of the largest electric bicycle sharing systems in Europe. The system, called MEVO, launched as a single public bike sharing scheme in the 14 cities and communes of the Gdańsk - Gdynia - Sopot Metropolitan Area in Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland.
Free-floating system
The study 'Universal accessibility in urbanised public spaces and buildings in Spain' analyses the current state of accessibility in several Spanish cities, providing a series of good practices that can serve as a reference for town councils to improve urban mobility.
As cities continue to work towards achieving Europe’s policy goals, it is becoming increasingly important that systems for monitoring and reporting progress are put in place. Through making use of sustainable urban mobility indicators, policymakers will be able to assess the success of current mobility measures, as well as ensuring that upcoming solutions are tailored to respond to the issues which are most pertinent to the cities in question.
A new study has estimated the social cost - and social benefits - of automobility, cycling and walking with the aim of improving cost-benefit analyses in the European Union.
Registration for this year's CIVITAS Forum Conference is now open! This edition of Europe's leading sustainable mobility event is taking place from 2-4 October in Graz, Austria.
This year marks a homecoming for CIVITAS - the very first Forum took place in Austria's second city in 2003. Yet mobility never stands still. The situation in Graz is very different compared to 16 years ago, like in many cities around Europe.
Sixty two electric vehicle charging stations will be installed in Slovakia, Czechia and Croatia by June 2020. These will be located to support long-distance travel by electric vehicles. The widespread deployment of cross-border electric vehicle charging infrastructure is a key element of the development of electric mobility.
The UK Department for Transport (DfT) is undertaking the “biggest review into transportation in a generation”, and has recently published its strategy for the future of urban mobility. This includes announcing a regulatory review, a £90 million transport innovation fund and its priorities for 2019.
5G networks no doubt have the technological specs necessary to power smart cities, but without careful design and planning the complexity of integrating everything from traffic to health care could prove overwhelming
Long-touted advances of smart cities may finally become reality with the increases to wireless network speeds and bandwidths promised by the switch to 5G. Seamless integration of our homes, cities and utilities can change the way we interact with everything from grocery stores to doctors.
The first sustainable urban distribution centre has opened in Spain and will make use of environmentally sustainable vehicles for deliveries. This centre, which is 360 square metres large, makes it possible to receive packages sold by e-commerce operators, store them and prepare them to be delivered by bike.
Miguel Gaspar, the Deputy Mayor for Mobility and Safety of Lisbon explains the main pillars of the cities' transport policy. Lisbon is currently developing it’s SUMP. The vision building phase has been completed as well as data collection. The city has a very clear strategy of moving forward with public transport as the backbone of urban mobility and a strong focus on active transport. The increase of the share of walking within the last 5 years is impressive and completely against the trend in many other cities.
A fast rail connection will link the Baltic capitals every two hours thanks to Rail Baltica, a major infrastructure project aiming to integrate the Baltic States in the European rail network.
Dubbed the “project of the century”, Rail Baltica will have a considerable impact on inter-regional connectivity and intermodal freight transport.
This year's March saw a first test of delivering goods by drones in Finnish Vantaa. It was one of the first tests at all taking place in an urban environment, even close to an international airport. For the test case, consumers of the Vantaa area were able to get their online-purchased goods delivered by drones. Instead of picking up the parcels in the local K-Markets, they could catch their goods directly at the landing platform called “vertiport” as soon as the drone landed and delivered the parcel.
