The integration of mobility management with land-use planning in local authorities has a large potential to influence both mode choice and travel demand. Twelve municipalities in Sweden have for three years (2012-2014) participated in a network established by the Swedish Energy Agency, to analyze, implement and evaluate such solutions.
The work in this project is based on the Swedish guidelines MaxLupoSE, which in turn are based on the MaxLupo guidelines developed by European Platform on Mobility Management in the MAX project. These guidelines contain 10 planning principles which local authorities in the network have had the chance to test and evaluate in local projects. The local authorities are: Borås, Eskilstuna, Huddinge, Jönköping, Linköping, Lund, Norrköping, Umeå, Uppsala, Västerås, Örebro and Örnsköldsvik. They represent towns from the north to the south of Sweden, and are all small- and medium-sized towns. All of the local authorities in the network have implemented one or more of the principles, and these have been followed up and evaluated.
The local authorities has shown a particular interest in combining mobility management and parking measures as they both provide significant influence on travel demand and mode choice to a site. One example that has been implemented in several local authorities is that of flexible parking standards which allow lower numbers of car parking spaces in new developments when mobility management measures or measures supporting sustainable mode choice (e.g. car-sharing, access to good public transport, bicycle parking, etc.) are implemented.
For example, the city of Linköping offers a reduction of 25 per cent of the parking places if car-sharing is introduced and promoted for a development area.
The city of Umeå had a bundle of parking-related measures, including an agreement to reduce the parking standards for parking places for employees by 40 per cent. The reduction in the parking standard came hand-in-hand with measures to promote other modes such as high-quality bicycle parking, car-sharing, public transport campaigns and a communication plan focusing on sustainable travelling.
Huddinge, on the other hand, has seen the need to develop a comprehensive mobility management plan for the entire municipality as a support for further work with mobility management.
All the municipalities have focused on increasing knowledge among public and private stakeholders and partners through seminars, workshops, one-to-one discussions and informative brochures. That has been vital for the success of the understanding and acceptance of the subject.
The main result is that including mobility management early in the planning process is a good way to enhance sustainable travelling. Combined with parking measures it can be a very effective way to influence travel demand and behaviour. A number of local authorities have in their local projects reduced car parking spaces as a result of the work done; approximately 2 400 car-parking spaces will be saved due to work in this project.
The participants in the project considered there to be a lack of support in existing local policy documents and guidelines as to how to implement the MaxLupoSE planning principles. This was particularly relevant regarding the principles related to parking, and many authorities have during the time of the network started revising their parking standards and policies.
The project also revealed that there is a lack of knowledge on sustainable travel in local authorities; among civil servants, politicians and developers. Several of the local authorities had several seminars and workshops on the topic in order to get everybody ‘on the same page’, and to be able to continue working with these issues in the future. Based on project experience, it is also recommended to engage all departments who are involved in some way in the planning process in discussions about it. With regards to developers, it is important to show the benefits to them of working with sustainable travel (e.g. building fewer parking places saves money).
Thanks to creating the network the authorities have been able to increase their knowledge, exchange ideas and test ideas at real development sites. This way of networking has proved to be very effective and appreciated by the participants and could be transferred also to other countries and regions. The network has been successful since all municipalities have approximately the same size with similar problems, and could exchange thoughts and results in a natural way.
