Urban Mobility Package: Evaluation confirms importance to adapt urban mobility planning to today’s technological, social, political, environmental, and health-related rea

On 26 February, the European Commission published its Staff Working Document on the Evaluation of the 2013 Urban Mobility Package.

The evaluation found that the Urban Mobility Package’s (UMP) objectives were appropriate for meeting the identified needs, but the analysis highlighted that numerous technological, social, political, environmental and health-related developments have affected urban mobility, in some cases to a considerable extent since 2013 (e.g. digitalisation).

Moreover, even though the problems in the area of urban mobility remain similar in 2020 as in 2013, some of their consequences are of rising severity and gravity for society, the economy and the environment. In addition to challenges with regard to the resilience of urban transport networks, which has been severely tested during the COVID pandemic, as well as the persisting challenges linked to tackling congestion and road casualties, this concerns in particular the accelerating tempo of climate change.

It is now a major EU priority, with the increasingly ambitious objectives of the European Green Deal, the Climate Target Plan 2030 and the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy, where the need to decarbonise transport is linked with ensuring important societal goals of affordability, accessibility, availability and inclusiveness. The consulted stakeholders identified that these areas, as well as a greater consideration for the needs of different societal groups and more focus on public transport and active mobility, should have had a greater prominence in the Package. In result, for the UMP objectives and measures to remain fully relevant, these new facts and developments have to be taken into account.

Evaluation Report

Executive Summary