Good practice:

SUITS (Sustainable Urban Integrated Transport Systems): Transferable tools for S-M local authorities

The project provides small and medium cities with a set of tools on planning, financing and implementing sustainable transport measures and supports the enhancement of the capacity of 9 cities in 7 EU countries (including cities in West Midlands, Central Macedonia and Lazio) to address challenges of urban mobility and foster investments in sustainable transport.
It develops tools for local authorities to enhance their capacity to design and implement sustainable transport measures:
- Demo tool for data collection and analysis, including a tool for traffic data acquisition and one for freight data acquisition
- Sample tools for route optimization and online surveys
- Data management platform
- Decision Support Tool, integrating a suite of tools on innovative financing methods, procurement of transport products and services and business-models for transport
- Capacity Building Toolbox integrating modules covering topics related to urban mobility and relevant training materials
- Change toolkit, which will transform the transport departments of small and medium cities into learning and knowledge sharing organisations
- Monitoring tool to evaluate local authorities to implement sustainable mobility measures
The citizens were involved through a set of Sustainable Travel and Public Awareness Surveys in 7 European cities. They were asked to express their opinion about sustainable transport and mobility in their city/region and the effect of any local measures to improve it.

The total budget for the project was €4,111,361.26.

All local authorities (LAs) identified a “change agent” that helped them to set a guiding team as driver for the project’s goals.
All LAs developed one clear vision for the future.
All LAs coped with the required internal change process successful and, as a result, had a shift of the value-system and the employees’ attitude that required organisational restructuring processes.
All LAs shared examples of the implementation of Key Performance Indicators for future sustainable mobility.

The underlying challenge in general is the building and maintaining of a trustful relationship between the project team and the local authorities. Thus, a lot of effort and time is needed to set these strong and collaborative relationships up.

A model was developed, available for any city that wants to become a learning LA. The model includes 8 steps to path the way internally for allow for technical innovations to be adopted and used in the LA.