PARK4SUMP: First Horizon 2020 project on parking to start in September!

PARK4SUMP is an exciting EU project that will develop and carry out a capacity building programme: for external follower cities, as well as for national governments. It will also involve service providers and parking industry representatives. It will consist of trainings, shadowing programmes and webinars as well as of targeted policy transfers. The capacity building programmes will regularly be updated in order to incorporate new insights.

Good parking management has shown to be a game changer in cities: it frees public space, supports local businesses, reduces search travel, reduces car travel while increasing sustainable transport modes, improves access for freight travel, generates revenue, increases safety, supports urban planning and can make cities more attractive. All this can be achieved at relatively low cost – it can even pay for itself! On the other hand, bad parking management can achieve the opposite, such as cluttered urban space, reduced access for sustainable modes, reduced safety and a very car-oriented city structure.

Park4SUMP aims to change this and increase and speed up the take up of high quality parking management and its integration into Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans. It will take the very best parking management examples, contexts and expertise in Europe and profit and learn from them in order to transfer these on a large scale and in the best way possible to new cities and new contexts: in Park4SUMP leading cities, in Park4SUMP follower cities and to project-external follower cities.

Park4SUMP has therefore set the following objectives:

1. To raise awareness and gain acceptance among relevant stakeholders on how the right parking policies can help cities
2. To build capacity, particularly among cities that have difficulty in implementing such policies
3. To stimulate further innovation in parking management,
4. To achieve widespread roll-out and transferability,
5. To free public space and reduce car travel while increasing sustainable transport modes, generate revenue for participating cities, increases safety, reduce emissions, support urban planning and improve the quality of life.

Stay tuned for PARK4SUMP, and its activities for follower cities at www.polisnetwork.eu.