Mobility management in early planning processes and its impact on energy efficiency in the transport sector

Panel: 4. Mobility, transport, and smart and sustainable cities

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Author:
Adam Mickiewicz, Swedish Energy Agency, Department for energy efficiency, Sweden

Abstract

In Sweden the transport sector amounts to roughly ¼ of all energy use. The Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) along with other actors has identified the importance of promoting urban structures and planning processes that facilitate an increased use and attractiveness of energy-efficient means of transportation. In this paper the focus however lies with examining how mobility management can be used as a regulatory tool employed by the SEA in regard to striving towards the Swedish national energy-efficiency goals in the transport sector. Mobility Management is usually understood as different informational measures used as a tool to reduce the amount of energy-inefficient transportation. Mobility management as seen in this paper is defined in a still broader context, as linking parking management to urban planning processes with the goals of reducing inducted car transportation between city functions.

From a national regulatory perspective a new approach in mobility management has been a bottom-up oriented networking programme where the SEA has worked together with 12 municipalities. The focus has been the incorporation of mobility management measures in the earliest stages of the municipal land use planning process. Via public/private partnerships between municipalities, contractors, investors and property owners it has been possible to combine informational measures with direct changes to the built physical environment.

The programme has yielded relevant results regarding mobility management in relation to national regulatory measures. The network form of the initiative has since January 2015 been continued by the participating municipalities without funding or involvement by the SEA.

The programme has also yielded several experiences and examples of how urban structures can be constructed where parking spaces are reduced in number and replaced by mobility management enabling features. A key part in achieving good results are the public/private partnerships where municipal authorities can negotiate deviations from the parking norm in exchange for the above mentioned mobility enabling features.