TRANSPLUS - RTD Project

The target of the Transport Planning, Land Use and Sustainability project was to develop planning tools and best practices aimed at managing future transport demand through integrated land-use and transport planning, reducing individual motorised vehicle movements and encouraging greater use of collective and other sustainable transport modes.

TRANSPLUS research project EVK4-CT-1999-00009 was supported by the European Commission under the 5FP and contributed to the implementation of the Key Action “City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage” within the Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development thematic programme. It aimed at creating a common understanding among European transport and land use authorities, policy makers and practitioners of the best ways to combine policies, neutralising barriers to implementation and realisation of the desired outcomes, ensuring compatibility and transferability between countries and cities, based also on citizens participation in urban & transport planning. It was coordinated by the Istituto di Studi per L´Integrazione di Sistemi in Rome , Italy , involving 19 partners accross Europe . including the accession countries.

The analysis of TRANSPLUS was focused on the need to develop land use and transport policies integration, making the several actors at the local, regional and national level aware of:

• the need for complementarity among all the policy measures, because isolated packages of measures (and in particular separated land use and transport policies) could be less effective than overall integrated strategies,

• the need to consider specific aspects related to land use and urban/regional development within the different transport policies.

A careful analysis of the urban planning system showed that to devise solid and integrated policies the various components of the system had to be considered, as well as the relations among them within an overall systemic approach. Policy makers need an input of continuous strategic thinking, and planning departments are devoted to it. Above all, policy makers are interested in a balanced view of all the approaches available to them. For this reason, the research was based on a continuous learning process , which involved consultants and representatives from European cities and administrations which are developing significant land use and transport integrated strategies and policy measures. This learning process concentrated primarily on selecting transport and land use integrated policies which can be applied at a local and regional level as well as on participation and negotiation with interest groups in order to generate that balanced view.

This simple fact has policy and administrative implications for the agencies at the local, regional and in some case also national level, as well as for the co-ordination between the different departments within those agencies (e.g. Land-use, Traffic, Environment) which are very often ignored. Moreover, if congestion relief and environmental protection are to be achieved, transport authorities and land use authorities have to devise joint strategic goals taking into account urban growth issues. Thus, the final target of TRANSPLUS is creating a common understanding among European transport and land use authorities, policy makers and practitioners of the issues at stake.

According to the targets of TRANSPLUS, an extension has been made to selected Newly Accession States. The objectives of this extension are to include new participants from some Newly Accession States (NAS) – Malta , Poland , Romania and Slovakia – within the running project. Five new partners from these countries started in 2002 with a parallel activity including:

• making a case study analysis of five additional cases – Warsaw (PL), Pomerania “tricity” region (PL), Ploiesti (Ro), Bratislava (SK), La Valletta (Malta) - applying the methodology of assessment of integrated land use and transport planning strategies – developed within Workpackage 2 - and implementation strategies - developed within Workpackage 3;

• further analysing factors and conditions enabling successful transferability of policies at the country and city level in the NAS countries involved, beyond what has been already included in the running project, with reference to selected Central and East European Countries. This was done using the methodology produced within TRANSPLUS Workpackage 4 and the specific additional case studies as test field to better identify barriers, problems and solutions;

• analysing to what extent methodologies for improving communication between decision makers, citizens and stakeholders in the field of urban planning – investigated within the running project for EU Member States - are needed and applicable to improve the policy processes investigated in the additional NAS case studies;

• finally, to widen the TRANSPLUS networking activity to a larger ensemble of end users – city representatives and other stakeholders – from the involved NAS countries, both changing the final TRANSPLUS workshop aimed to about 80 cities from EU countries into a Final Conference, which was held in a NAS (Slovakia) for EU and NAS cities representatives, and realising some targeted dissemination in the NAS concerned.

TRANSPLUS is included into a cluster of four research projects (LUTR) on “strategic approaches to integrate transport and land use planning”.

Further details on TRANSPLUS can be found on www.transplus.net