The CoEXist project is contributing to the revision process of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP) guidelines. CoEXist aims at making the new SUMP guidelines “automation-ready”.
What is a SUMP?
The concept of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) has been established in Europe by the 2013 Urban Mobility Package. This mobility planning approach was introduced to respond to the “need for more sustainable and integrative planning processes as a way of dealing with the complexity of urban mobility.” (Eltis) The concept of SUMP encourages cities to adopt new planning methods to build a cleaner urban mobility in our streets. Some of the main characteristics of the SUMP approach are the integration of different policy fields (e.g. transport, environment, energy, economic and social affaire, etc.); a participatory process with the population and stakeholders; or planning for all modes in an integrated manner.
A revision process
Since the publication of the European SUMP guidelines in 2013, several major innovations – including automation – changed the way cities are planning for transport and mobility. Therefore, a general revision process is currently taking place to update the current guidelines and to complement them with a series of topic-centred guides.
The role of CoEXist in this process will be to contribute to a guide on planning for automation. Building on the experience of the CoEXist pioneer cities, the project will provide advise on how to plan for automated urban mobility – an area which is still very uncertain.
Planning for automation, how?
Connected and automated mobility was not considered at all in the original guidelines (2013), however the introduction of CAVs in cities will cause significant changes in some of the core principles of SUMPs, such as:
Participation: How do you involve citizens in a topic with high uncertainties?- Cooperation: What sort of institutional cooperation is required?
- Measure selection: What sort of measures can cities implement now to ensure that connected and automated mobility is to their benefit?
- Monitoring and evaluation/assessment: How to integrate connected and automated in assessment frameworks?
Using the experience of the CoEXist cities as well as the work undertaken for the Automation-Ready framework, CoEXist will also try to respond to other questions, particularly regarding:
- the regulatory and governance framework needed for the introduction and operation of CAVs in cities;
- the social changes that CAVs will create in urban areas, and in particular the impact on livability;
- the economic impact of automation;
- the changes in the mobility patterns and transport systems in cities; and
- the long-term vision of cities for mobility.