50 European cities commit to sustainable urban mobility

The EU funded Project QUEST (“Quality management tool for Urban Energy efficient Sustainable Transport”) will improve the quality of urban sustainable transport. The efforts of the project will not stay confined to the happy few: fifty cities in seventeen countries signed in to join the project. These fifty cities will develop action plans that will substantially improve urban transport, and urban live in general.

QUEST’s overall goal is to set up a quality management tool for sustainable urban mobility which can be applicable for all European cities. The focus is to support cities in making progress in urban transport planning because many of cities face problems to organise and manage traffic in a more sustainable way. QUEST focuses on midsized cities (50.000 – 300.000 inhabitants). Other than bigger cities they often lack knowledge and capacities to prepare and implement sustainable mobility plans.

QUEST has developed an audit tool which helps to evaluate the level of the sustainability of the current transport system. A tailor made improvement program or action plan for future urban mobility policy is set up. The tools developed in the QUEST Project are designed to get common commitments from different stakeholders in a city towards. In stakeholder meetings, moderated by a trained QUEST auditor, different opinions and suggestions are balanced and consensus achieved on short- and long-term goals and measures to make the city’s transport better.

Effort is being focused primarily on cities that have only recently started activities to improve urban transport and secondary on cities that have taken action in the past, but do not see the expected effect. Advanced forerunner cities (or champions’) have sufficient experience in sustainable mobility to come up with adequate improvements themselves and help other QUEST cities through exchange of experience.

For more information, contact [email protected] or [email protected] – For the full list of QUEST cities, visit www.quest-project.eu