A new Interreg project focuses on how to achieve a more attractive and environmentally friendly commuting system in the Baltic Sea Region. The project “Sustainable Urban Mobility and Commuting in Baltic Cities” (acronym: SUMBA) was launched in October 2017.
SUMBA will develop and test tools that help urban and transport planners to assess, plan, and integrate intermodal mobility solutions into transport plans and policies of their cities or municipalities. The project will enhance coordination of local and regional actors with different stakeholders, increase their capacities, as well as share expertise and best practise between different countries.
“As main outputs, we will develop a number of tools which allow us to approach the issue with joint methodology, provide a blueprint to cities to help them to draft strategic, comprehensive documents that address all crucial issues regarding suburban-city commuter mobility,” said Johanna Fink, the project manager of SUMBA.
She told that transport sector is lagging behind in finding solutions that could effectively reduce emissions, and which would meet the European Union’s goals of cutting emissions from the sector.
“Across the Baltic Sea Region, more and more people choose to live in suburbs while they continue to work in cities, resulting in high number of daily commuters. Commuter traffic is still dominated by private cars, which causes problems such as congestion, air pollution, high demand of parking spaces and higher costs of public transport,” explained Johanna Fink.
“And that’s why we need SUMBA, to address commuter transport and help to mitigate these problems,” added the project manager.
The project was launched in October 2017 and will come to conclusions by September 2020. The project is led by City of Hamburg, Borough of Altona in cooperation with German Aerospace Center, Baltic Environmental Forum Estonia, City of Tallinn, The Union of Harju County Municipalities, City of Tartu, Baltic Environmental Forum Latvia, City of Riga, City of Växjö, Šiauliai City Municipality, Olsztyn Municipality and the Earth and People Foundation. The project is financed by the European Regional Development Fund.