FAQ

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

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The 100 Questions Initiative

Launched in 2019, the 100 Questions Initiative seeks to identify pressing policy issues through a data-driven decision-making framework. In May 2022, this initiative applied the 100 Questions methodology to define, curate, and prioritize ten actionable questions to make transportation and mobility policies more data-driven. These questions would subsequently be used to inform priority areas to build data collaboratives, a new form of collaboration, beyond the public-private partnership model, in which participants from different sectors—in particular, private companies —exchange their data to create public value for sustainability in transportation and mobility. The 100 Questions’ approach to identifying priority questions and useful data to answer them stands at the nexus of data use and data responsibility.

  • What is Urban Mobility?

    • Urban mobility is about enabling all people, regardless income or other social status, to access the urban services they need, with less traffic and effort. It refers to all aspects of movement in urban settings.
    • It can include modes of transport, such as walking, cycling, and public transit, as well as the spatial arrangement of these modes in the built environment. 
    • Sustainable mobility is the ability to meet society’s need to move freely, gain access, communicate, trade and establish relationships without sacrificing other essential human or ecological values, today or in the future.

  • What is a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan?

    • A Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan is designed to satisfy the mobility and accessibility needs of people and businesses within cities and their surroundings for a better quality of life. 
    • It builds on existing planning practices and takes due consideration of integration, participation, and evaluation principles.

  • What is a Sustainable Urban Mobility Strategy?

    • It addresses the urban mobility challenges of a whole metropolitan region in synergy with spatial planning, environmental protection and other metropolitan-wide strategies.
    • It provides the framework for developing Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans for towns and cities within a metropolitan area. 
    • It is designed to improve accessibility and provide high-quality and sustainable mobility at a metropolitan scale. 
    • It is based on a collaborative working process among municipalities, local government units, citizens and stakeholders. 
    • It requires effective multi-level governance and partnership approaches to address the needs for regional and local mobility.

  • What is involved in Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning?

    • Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning is an innovative, integrated planning process requiring intensive cooperation, knowledge exchange and consultation between planners, politicians, institutions, and local and regional organizations and citizens.
    • Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning includes a number of steps from the identification of the main issues, to the development of a joint vision and the identification of specific measures and a process to implement actions. 
    • A vital component of the process of developing a SUMP is the involvement of citizens and stakeholders and the active participation of the public, through dialogue to identify mobility problems, find common objectives, and in developing solutions.  
    • This process can help reveal the real challenges that a city faces and explain how they will deteriorate if the city remains on its present course. 
    • It enables this to be avoided and by developing sustainable and integrated proposals to improve mobility. 
    • It can help ensure these proposals are based on a sound understanding of the existing system. 
    • The process can also help citizens and stakeholders support a common vision and agree on packages of measures to improve mobility in their city. 

  • What is different about Urban Transport and Urban Mobility Planning?

    • Traditional Urban Transport Planning concentrates on the movement of vehicles without considering accessibility or changes in spatial development.
    • Urban Mobility Planning concentrates on the movement of people and accessibility as well as spatial development options that improve mobility.  

  • What is Accessibility?

    • Urban accessibility can be defined as the ease by which people have access to jobs, housing, shopping and in general to goods and services. 
    • It combines the proximity of opportunities (spatial planning) and the efficiency of mobility networks. 
    • Planning for accessibility involves developing places that offer people and businesses the means to reach more opportunities with less mobility. 

  • What is Active Mobility?

    • Active mobility is a generic term to identify any form of human-powered transportation such as walking, cycling, skating, kick scooters, etc. 
    • To encourage active mobility, cities are improving sidewalks, street crossings and other walking infrastructure. 

  • What is Micromobility?

    • Micromobility includes the use of exclusively human-powered vehicles, such as bicycles, skates, skateboards and kick scooters.
    • It refers to personal transportation using devices and vehicles weighing up to 350 kg and whose power supply, if any, is gradually reduced and cut off at a given speed limit which is no higher than 45 km/h. 
    • In recent years, the growing use of electric light vehicles such as e-bikes and e-scooter has given rise to the term electric micromobility or e-micromobility.

  • What is Mobility as a Service (MaaS)?

    • Mobility as a Service (MaaS) allows citizens access to mobility services in a simple, easy-to-understand way. 
    • MaaS is a service model that enables users to plan and pay for their journeys using a range of services via a single customer interface, such as a mobile application. 
    • Users can hop on any bus, train, tram, metro, bicycle, taxi, ferry, car-share, rental car, etc. for a single monthly fee, for instance, with trip routing suggestions based on users’ specific, prioritised criteria (i.e. lowest cost, shortest travel time, space for large items, wheelchair accessibility, lowest carbon footprint).

  • What are the roles of stakeholders and citizens in Urban Mobility Planning?

    • Involving stakeholders and citizens is a fundamental requirement of sustainable urban mobility planning. 
    • Citizens have local knowledge and can provide expertise and opinions which contribute to the development of effective plans and measures. 
    • Furthermore, involvement encourages citizens and stakeholders to take ownership of sustainable mobility ideas, policies and projects. 
    • The planning authority, citizens and stakeholders should work together continuously throughout the Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning process. 
    • Citizens and stakeholders should be able to directly contribute their concerns, advice, possible solutions and innovative ideas.  
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