Prof Tom Rye presents project at POLIS-European Parking Association in Prague

Prof Tom Rye presented our new Park4SUMP Horizon2020 project at a POLIS-European Parking Association event on parking management in Prague yesterday.

Parking management should be an important part of sustainable urban mobility planning (SUMP) but unfortunately, it is one the most underdeveloped segments. Most EU member states lack national level policy and guidance on parking.

PARK4SUMP aims to change this, because good parking management has proved to be of utmost importance. It frees the public space, supports local businesses, reduces search travel, generates revenue, increases safety, supports urban planning and can make cities more attractive. The general concept is to take the very best parking management examples, contexts and expertise in Europe, learn and profit from these, and transfer them on a large scale and in the best way possible to new cities . This covers raising awareness and gaining acceptance among relevant stakeholders; building capacity, particularly among cities that have difficulty in picking up such policies; stimulating further innovation; and achieving wide roll-out and transferability.

Park4SUMP will work on traffic and travel avoidance; it will support less car dependent lifestyles and put into practise innovations in planning and location policy. It will also optimise the use of existing infrastructure. Furthermore the modal shift towards more efficient modes like walking, cycling and public transport will be encouraged. Convincing arguments to incorporate parking management can be given : it has low costs, it pays for itself, it delivers money, it is easy to implement and to modify and it can be done in incremental steps. The main expected impact will be cities with strongly improved parking policies that are creatively used to improve the quality of life and business in cities and develop the cities in a more sustainable way. Park4SUMP aims to establish parking management as an essential part of SUMPS of its leading, follower and external follower cities. Park4SUMP will deliver behaviour change whilst generating revenue.