Your city, as many cities today, face a multitude of challenges related to congestion, noise, air quality issues, health, safety, quality of life and the problem with a multitude of diverting policies in the field of urban transport. On the global level, the challenge of climate change and its environmental, health and economic impacts are strongly connected to transport and unsustainable mobility behaviour.

These challenges are the driving forces behind the recent calls for powerful measures on the local transport arena. Urban mobility issues are complex and cannot be successfully solved by simple transport plans. They require radical new policy instruments together with an integrated approach to mobility and the design of our cities. Sustainable Urban Transport Plans (SUTP) have been strongly recommended by the European Union as the foundation upon which a new approach to transport can be built. Embracing radical new polices and facilitating the necessary integration of transport, urban and economic planning.

The preparation and adoption of a Sustainable Urban Transport Plan is a process that often re-quires new ways of thinking, cross departmental cooperation and integration of different policy areas. Comprehensive new tools together with guidance on their use are required to help the cities to both understand and get started with the SUTP process. This SUTP website ‘Moving Sustainably’ is based on the Baltic Sea Region INTERREG III B project BUSTRIP (Baltic Urban Sustainable Transport Implementation and Planning). BUSTRIP has supported twelve Northern European cities in their groundbreaking efforts to be the first cities in Europe to prepare and implement SUTPs. The objective of this website is to provide tools and guidance for transport and urban planners and de-cision-makers on how to plan and implement sustainable urban transport.

A Sustainable Urban Transport Plan has two basic components:
SUT planning
The process of preparing an SUTP plan – SUT planning – requires ongoing and effective local and regional cooperation and collaboration. This joint effort between administrations, agencies and stakeholders needs to encompass visioning, partnerships, involvement, policy and finance option appraisal and a review of existing implementation programmes and mechanisms. The process of SUT Planning is at least as important as the completed SUT-plan

The process of preparing the plan should be carefully considered and agreed with all relevant stakeholders. Human and financial resources will be required to manage the SUT Planning process. New institutional, organisational and communication arrangements may be required. Existing ar-rangements should be reviewed with stakeholders as part of the process of agreeing on the new arrangements. An essential element of the SUT planning is the free and unhindered exchange of information, knowledge and views. The process and the supporting resources should support the open and transparent process of SUT Planning.

SUT plan
The SUT plan is a tool to provide more sustainable ways of meeting the mobility and transport needs for people and goods in urban areas. It comprehensively addresses public and private trans-port, motorised and non-motorised transport, moving and parked vehicles as well as freight trans-port and logistics. These transport categories are dealt with in an integrated way. The SUT plan should become a guiding document for all sectors of planning that involve, affect or are affected by transport. The SUT plan should express a shared vision on the development of transport in the city in the framework of sustainability and provide a strategy to systematically work towards this goal.
In short the SUT plan is the working document developed by the city to address the challenge of achieving sustainable urban transport.

Transforming urban mobility and urban planning practice into sustainable practice is a long proc-ess. Our unsustainable transport patterns and infrastructure have emerged over the course of dec-ades. Our infrastructure, our cities and the expectations we have for mobility and transport cannot be changed overnight. The starting point is different for each city; political situation, national and regional characteristics and the resources available. Therefore every city has to find its own, workable solution for the SUTP process.

The figure below visualises the general process of the SUTP. The outer circle and the block arrow on the right hand show the SUT planning part and the inner circle shows the SUT plan process. The model illustrates the need for regular update and feedback to the organisation on the progress of the plan. Policy coordination, stakeholder cooperation, equity and gender equality and capacity building continuously inform the development and implementation of the Sustainable Urban Transport Plan and its actions.

The ‘Moving Sustainably’ guidance consists of the guidebook and the website for Sustainable Urban Transport Plans.

The website is divided into three parts; the first focuses on the process of preparing the SUT plan (link); the second concentrates on the effective implementation of the plan (link) and the third considers the measures that should be carried out as a result of the plan. The chapters within the main parts (link) are the ‘concrete’ steps in the process. Each stage is interlinked and all users are recommended to consider and assess all the steps of the process. For some local administrations the implementation of some of the steps is self-evident and will be normal practice. The guidance can be used in different ways; either as a ‘step-by-step’ guide in preparing a SUTP ‘from scratch’, or it can serve as the basis for carrying out a gap analysis between the already existing transport planning processes in the city and an SUTP.

Each step of the process includes a why and a how section. This provides the rationale and prac-tical guidance to complete the work involved in each step. Each chapter concludes with a check-list that provides a view on what are the most important issues to be ‘checked off’ and considered for each step of the SUTP for the city. The twelve city cases present a selection of ‘hands-on’ ex-periences taken from the twelve BUSTRIP project cities. Each case study focuses on different steps in the SUTP processes. The BUSTRIP cities experiences provide practical illustration of how the different steps of the SUTP process have been carried out by different cities.

The website also introduces the European Union definition and qualities for SUTP, policy documents, a list of good Practice databases and a glossary. You also find templates and forms for the SUTP work on the website.

Enjoy the journey through the process of Sustainable Urban Transport Plans!