Urban mobility is recognised as an important factor in favouring the economic growth and the work force rate, with a strong impact on sustainable development. At the European level, in the past two years, more and more policies have approached issues and elaborated legislative initiatives related to the promotion of urban transport.
Therefore, rethinking urban mobility supposes optimising the use of the entire variety of modes of transport and organising a co-modality between different types of public and individual transport. In order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to encourage public transport, the authorities of big European cities implement policies for eliminating or reducing modes of transport from central areas. For instance, the application of ticketing systems in London and Stockholm had positive consequences on transport fluidity. Thus, the mobility management completes traditional measures which are based on infrastructure, by influencing passengers’ behaviour before beginning the journey and by drawing people’s attention to options of sustainable transport.
By ensuring some continuous links with efficient and qualitative modes of transport, cities can eliminate traffic from central urban areas through integrated transport systems such as in the German city of Munich – the municipality finances the project “Living without car”, and during 2012 the fourth phase of the project implementation is carried out). According to the characte-ristics of the area, in some cities there is a need of developing a new infrastructure or optimising the existing one in order to offer a viable transport system.
France is one of the European states whose legislation actively encourages the promotion of the increase of public transport use, which will subsequently lead to reducing road traffic. Thus, the authorities have recently published a decision by which from October 1st, 2013 all legal or private persons in France organising or commercialising transport services, regardless of the mode of transport or the dimension of the company, will have to display CO2 emissions for each transport service. For providing a single framework of emission publication, another decision was made, establishing the reference values to be used for calculations.
If these laws are applied at national level, it is clear that the capital should be among the first cities to act for the purpose of reducing emissions, trying to reduce 20% of CO2 until 2020 and to optimise the shift of road traffic to the other environmentally-friendly modes of transport. The creation of “green areas” has become for Paris one of the priorities in the encouraging environmentally-friendly transport. The criteria regarding the measures of traffic restriction in “green areas” are applied and where possible, the authorities prioritize the extension of pedestrian areas and closed streets for motorised vehicles. But these projects cannot be successful if alternative offers are not made: introducing lines/corridors for the tramway or bus transport, the accomplishment of platforms of the intermodal change, projects which in Paris receive a positive answer from both citizens and authorities.
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