Sustainable urban mobility plans : a comparison of the implementation in Spain and Sweden

The European Union Commission is preparing to put forward a proposal for every city or municipality in the Union larger than 100.000 inhabitants to prepare and implement a sustainable urban transport plan, also called a mobility plan, in order to improve the traffic situation in the cities. A sustainable mobility plan is an integrated plan considering all modes of transport planned towards a sustainable urban development. The measures implemented are a mixture of physical changes and information with the aim to reach a better traffic environment with reduced traffic volumes and emissions, increased accessibility and safety: and an increased quality of life for all citizens. The physical changes can be compared to traditional traffic planning while the information part goes under the name Mobility Management and includes among other things change of travel habits. In some European countries implementation of transport plans have already been done. This is the case in the United Kingdom where Local Transport Plans, LTP are done for all regions: France which has their Urban Mobility Master Plans, PDU, Holland and Italy. In Spain there is no tradition of creating integrated mobility plans though at present they are developing a guide for cities larger than 100.000 inhabitants according to the EU proposal. Sweden is known as a precursor country of how to reach a sustainable environment but in this case there is no all embracing plan for transports. Some cities have started working with mobility management lately. A comparative study has been done between Spain and Sweden considering their present traffic situation and what would be necessary to change to reach demands of reduced emissions and increased accessibility. The thesis ends with a discussion of whether it would be possible to implement a common sustainable urban mobility plan in all European countries and if it would have any exit.Validerat; 20101217 (root