GreenCharge Project Deliverable: D7.1 GreenCharge SUMP eMobility Approach

A Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan is a strategic plan designed to satisfy the mobility needs of people and businesses in cities and their surroundings for a better quality of life. It builds on existing planning practices and takes due consideration of integration, participation, and evaluation principles.

The challenges range from congestion and space consumption to safety, dependence on certain resources and local and global emissions. Understanding that transport can be an emotionally charged topic involving personal freedom of choice, comfort, status and privilege, sustainable urban mobility planning is a comprehensive planning process that brings citizens and stakeholders on-board.

Why are SUMPs important for e-mobility, and vice versa?

SUMPs take the social and environmental aspects of transport into account, meaning that the sustainable modes of walking, cycling and collective transport play a much larger role than inconventional transport plans. The focus has shifted from pure traffic policy to a balanced mix of transport modes that foster accessibility as well as health and environmental quality.

All cars consume roughly the same space but with just a shift to electric cars we will only have cleaner congestion. It is a major objective of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) to develop holistic concepts to reduce congestion, and policies in GreenCharge pilot cities strongly support this.

Electrification can support a shift towards sustainable modes.

Without a doubt, European cities need a shift away from single-occupancy cars towards walking, cycling, shared modes and collective transport.

Various electric mobility components of SUMP strategies can lead toward a modal shift:

a) Electric assistance for bicycles

b) Electrification of buses

c) Electrification as part of new mobility services

d) Electrification as part of new ‘sharing concepts’

Role of GreenCharge

GreenCharge will develop technical solutions and business modelsthat encourage e-mobility, based as far as possible on renewable energy. It will carry out trials at sites in Barcelona, Bremen and Oslo and use those to evaluate impact using methods promoted by CIVITAS.The “lessons learned” in these three cities will be documented in an easily understood format, providing useful inspiration to development of SUMPs in other cities. The project has a dialogue with group of “uptake cities, facilitating refinement of SUMP idea during the project itself.