Ranking sustainable urban mobility indicators and their matching transport policies to support liveable city Futures: A MICMAC approach

Journal article, 2023

Understanding, promoting and managing sustainable urban mobility better is very critical in the midst of an unprecedented climate crisis. Identifying, evaluating, benchmarking and prioritising its key indicators is a way to ensure that policy-makers will develop those transport strategies and measures necessary to facilitate a more effective transition to liveable futures. After identifying from the literature and the European Commission (EC) directives the indicators that are underpinning the powerful scheme of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) that each municipality in Europe may implement to elevate the wellbeing of its population, we adopt a Cross Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC) approach to assess, contextualise and rank them. Through conducting a qualitative study that involved a narrative literature review and more importantly in-depth discussions with 28 elite participants, each of them with expertise in sustainable development, we are able to designate the Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators (SUMIs) that are the most (and least) impactful. According to our analysis the most powerful indicator is traffic congestion, followed by affordability of public transport for the poorest, energy efficiency, access to mobility service and multimodal integration. This analysis allows us to then match them with the most applicable strategies that may ensure a holistic approach towards supporting in practical terms sustainable mobility in the city level. These are in ranking order: Transit Oriented Development (TOD); public and active transport enhancement; parking policies, vehicle circulation and ownership measures; telecommuting and car-pooling.