SUMP 2.0 Update launched in Nicosia

The concept of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP) has been adopted widely in Europe over the last years. However, new developments in society and technology, as well as valuable experiences from practical implementation require an update of the Guidelines. This process to further develop and improve the SUMP Guidelines has been successfully launched at this year's SUMP Conference in Nicosia, Cyprus on 14 May 2018 by Maja Bakran, Deputy Director-General for Mobility and Transport of the European Commission.

An entire conference stream was dedicated to "SUMP 2.0" and SUMP experts and practitioners shared ideas and helped collect a wide range of valuable input for this major update. The conference kicked-off the stakeholder process, which will collect additional feedback at several events over the next six months.

Based on a conference survey and focus group discussions in Nicosia, a preliminary analysis of the most important needs for further development has produced some clear messages already:

• SUMP is strongly endorsed as a valuable concept by the mobility planning community.
• More consideration of specific planning contexts and new trends and technologies are requested to widen the scope of SUMP. Examples include particular national circumstances, the contexts of smaller cities, cities with little data or budget, and rural areas.
• The current guideline documents are well appreciated by practitioners, even if improvements are still proposed; especially more good practice examples are demanded in an updated version.
• Key aspects and process steps of SUMP require further support. Selection and implementation of measures is the area with the highest priority for practitioners, but also topics such as stakeholder participation are still challenging for planners in some parts of Europe.
• Training courses and an updated website will play a key role in informing about updated SUMP Guidelines.

The discussions at the SUMP conference provide an excellent insight into the priorities of the SUMP community in Europe. This will help the ELTIS SUMP Coordinating Group to identify the aspects that should get high recognition in the next generation of the SUMP Guidelines. The publication of the updated Guidelines is planned at the 2019 SUMP Conference in Groningen.

Story provided by: Rupprecht Consult, 2018