The City of Örebro is located in the centre of Sweden and is the country´s seventh largest municipality. Some 143,000 people live in the municipality. The City is well known to its efforts towards sustainable planning and development and international activity. It is characterised by constant population growth.
The mobility plan for Örebro (Sweden) includes objectives and general principles for traffic in the city. It also serves as an umbrella for a whole range of standalone documents which, in most cases, contain their own measurable objectives and/or precise measures to be taken (including Parking policy, Action plan for changing travel behaviour, Public transport programme for the Municipality of Örebro, Action plan for increasing bicycle use, Cycling network plan, Footpaths plan, Programme to combat noise pollution, Traffic safety programme, Speed and configuration of the main streets and others).
With effect from 2015 the mobility plan will be followed up annually in the form of a traffic audit, into which the existing cycling audit will be integrated. The traffic audit should report on a number of key indicators that also monitor the standalone documents that exist under the umbrella of the mobility plan.
Objectives of Örebro’s SUMP are as follows:
- Of the total number of journeys undertaken in the Municipality of Örebro, walking, cycling and public transport should account for 60% of them by 2020 (the rate was 44% in 2011);
- The total amount of fossil fuel-driven car traffic should be reduced in absolute terms by the year 2020;
- Within the built-up area of Örebro, it should take at most twice as long to take the bus compared to taking the car, and at most 1.5 times as long to cycle, compared with taking the car.
SUMP also sets some general but strategic principles for traffic in the city, which are:
- Örebro should be a city planning rather than transport planning and building planning;
- The citizens should be in Focus;
- Traffic is the movement of people and goods, not vehicles;
- Space-efficient modes of transport need to be prioritised;
- Mobility planning should contribute to an attractive municipality and city centre;
- Mobility planning should be based on the objectives of sustainable mobility – such planning should not be based on forecasts;
- Mobility planning should be based on the three dimensions of sustainable development and the children’s perspective („The possibility for children and young people to move around throughout the city should be one of the most important factors. It is therefore very important to stress the road safety aspect when planning, and increase the ambitions in that area around, for example, schools”);
- Mobility planning should be based on a realistic – but optimistic – faith in technological development from a 20-year perspective.