Experts and practitioners met at the Polis Environment and Health working group meeting on April 7-8 in Brussels to talk about active travel, travel behaviour change and exchange on best practices

A joint PASTA - Stepping Stone workshop took place on April 7th 2014 with the aim to complement research results from both projects with expert feedback.

Cities, experts and pracitioners attending the working group meeting were asked to comment on the PASTA literature review exercise on terms and definitions of "active travel" and "active travel measures", and validate preliminary results and policy recommendations on travel behaviour change proposed by the Stepping Stones program.

On April 8th the Polis working group meeting continued with a best practice exchange session. The morning session was opened by the city of Rome presenting the new Mobility Master Plan and active travel measures, followed by Dresden - leading European city on health and transport and member of the WHO Healthy City Network as well as of the German network. Health expert Ms. Lucy Saunders with Transport for London presented the world's first Transport Action plan integrating health aspects, followed by a presentation by Rijkswaterstaat on Healthy Urbanisation in Utrecht.

In the afternoon Paul Curtis, London European Partnership for Transport, presented the Polis - THE PEP cooperation and Sylvain Haon, Polis director, gave an overview of the updated Polis position paper on health and policy recommendations. Presentations from the United States fucused on a comprehensive approach to health in regional transportation planning, perspectives from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and applications of Integrated Transport and Health Impact Modelling Tool (ITHIM), including updates from Nashville.

Presentations are available for download on the event webpage.

For more information, please contact Florinda Boschetti or phone 0032 (2) 500 56 74.