Definitely. Polish cities are already successful in implementing various solutions in the field of sustainable mobility, which is appreciated by the majority of residents. Good practices in the field of sustainable urban mobility in Poland include:
Kategoria: SustainableMobility
What should a sustainable mobility policy be based on?
As part of our project, we defined nine most important success factors for the sustainable mobility policy:
Formulating acceptable, specific and measurable strategic goals
This is the basis of a sustainable mobility policy. The goals have to result from the diagnosis of needs and opportunities in a given city and not be “prescribed”, unrealistic or generic goals of a sustainable mobility policy introduced at the EU or national level. Goals of the policy should be defined as effects and not expenditures. This is an issue often concerning local governments, which treat “purchase of electric buses” or “construction of a tram line” as goals. These are only common measures to achieve the goal, but an appropriately set goal is needed to assess, whether in a given case the measures taken are optimal and complete, creating an effective and efficient intervention logic.
Does this change in approach have any scientific basis?
Of course it does. Scientific research lying at the heart of sustainable mobility has shown that expansion of infrastructure leads to more travelling, but not necessarily more efficient travelling. What’s more – by travelling more, we negativelly destroy both the environment and the climate.
Why “mobility” and not “transport”?
The concept of mobility is not only about transporting people, but mainly about making it possible for them to access their destinations easily. Thanks to this, sometimes it is even possible to treat a given need locally, without having to travel. In recent years, the word “transport” has been widely replaced in some contexts with “mobility”. Introduction of the term “mobility” into transport economics is a result of intention to emphasise two issues in the existing theory of transport systems.