Overview
The CIVITAS Initiative - cleaner and better transport in cities - stands for CIty-VITAlity - Sustainability. In the CIVITAS I Initiative, launched by DG-TREN from 2002 to 2005 19 cities participated in testing and implementing measures to achieve the objective of cleaner and better transport. With € 50 million of financial support from the European Commission the following cities; Aalborg, Barcelona, Berlin, Bremen, Bristol, Bucharest, Cork, Gdynia, Gothenburg, Graz, Kaunas, Lille, Nantes, Pecs, Prague, Rome, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Winchester), implemented 212 measures on sustainable transport. The measures contributed to an enormous boost for sustainable transport solutions in the cities and in many cases a definite breakthrough was achieved.
METEOR, a crucial component of the CIVITAS Initiative, was the project responsible for monitoring, evaluating and disseminating the results of 19 cities which worked together in four separate demonstration projects (MIRACLES, TELLUS, TRENDSETTER and VIVALDI).
The METEOR objectives were:
- To play a supporting and facilitating role for all parties involved in the CIVITAS Initiative (this included the European Commission, especially Project Officers and other personnel, the partners involved in the actual demonstration projects, as well as stakeholders at the national level and the scientific community);
- To perform independent monitoring and evaluation including expert deliverable reviews on the basis of a sound methodological approach based upon state of the art expertise and enriching the know how in the field of evaluation;
- To analyse CIVITAS level impacts and to provide clear recommendations and publicity for widest take-up of successful demonstration project results;
- To facilitate consensus on the pre-conditions and implications of Clean Urban Transport and to identify the need for action to enable transfer and take-up of radical policies on the pan-European level.
The project consisted of the following groups of activities.
- Project Management, which took care of the internal co-ordination and the communication to the EC. It was strongly related to the other groups of activities.
- Communication, Motivation and Involvement management. This group of activities managed the involvement of the cities, by motivating and supporting them. In fact a crucial issue for the success of the CIVITAS Initiative was to achieve a full commitment of the cities to co-operate within the pan-European dimension of CIVITAS.
- Evaluation. The objective was to identify the impact of the CIVITAS measures and applications.
- Monitoring. This group of activities aimed at checking that the cities delivered what they planned to.
- Policy Recommendations. The objective was to interpret of the results of the evaluation and monitoring.
- Dissemination. The objective was to disseminate the results of the measures implemented in order to achieve a multiplier effect.
These activities were to ensure the achievement of the objectives of the CIVITAS Initiative and spread the knowledge on cleaner and better in transport in cities throughout Europe.
Funding
Results
The main outcomes of the project are:
- the Cross Site Evaluation Report;
- the dissemination booklet 'CIVITAS in Europe - A proven Framework for progressing urban mobility'; and
- the dissemination booklet 'A policy assessement of the CIVITAS Initiative'.
1) Cross Site Evaluation Report
This report provides a cross site evaluation of all the CIVITAS I measures that have been implemented. During the project the cities evaluated the impacts of the measures where possible. The evaluation was divided into:
- the process evaluation (the process of realising the output of the measures);
- impact evaluation (the outcome of the measures).
An analysis was also performed to investigate to what extent the measures were suitable for adoption by other cities ('the transferability of measures'). The report is based on evaluation data provided by the demonstration projects and the cities. The methodology and the overall results are described in the first part, while a more detailed description of the results for each cluster of measures is provided in the second part.
METEOR grouped the 212 different innovative measures into 11 clusters in order to draw constructive conclusions of the several themes. The clusters are:
- Transport information and Management;
- Multimodal interchange;
- Mobility management;
- Cycling;
- Car sharing and car pooling;
- Zones with controlled access;
- Clean vehicles and fuels;
- Public Transport;
- Goods distribution and logistic services;
- Parking management;and
- Road Pricing.
The process evaluation aimed to identify typical patterns of barriers and drivers that affected the implementation of the measures in CIVITAS I, and to provide substance for the formulation of policy recommendations regarding future implementation processes. The information for the process evaluation was provided by the 19 CIVITAS I cities and their local partners through self-assessment. A total of 212 measure level result templates were analysed in terms of statements concerning barriers and drivers, including any additional information with regard to the implementation process. Based on the issues identified by the local representatives, 12 barrier/driver categories were defined, four of which have further been divided into subcategories. The assessment of
Policy implications
The main conclusions and recommendations pertain to the following themes.
Formulating sustainable urban policies
- The CIVITAS policy fields ensure a comprehensive coverage of all possible actions to increase the sustainability of urban transport systems. CIVITAS I has allowed to meaningfully test them and refine their formulation, thus consolidating a credible reference framework for policy formulation. The credibility of this policy framework is a major asset for policy makers, who can more confidently claim that the CIVITAS strategy 'goes in the right direction'.
- The results of the implementation of CIVITAS I so far clearly show that despite the complexity of integrated urban policies, when it comes to delivering higher sustainability levels the critical success factors can be reduced to 2 main 'control variables': modal split and vehicle fleet performance. These 2 factors should ultimately drive policy formulation and the identification of priorities.
- CIVITAS I has confirmed that the exchange of best practices among cities is highly beneficial. However, one should not expect to draw immediate conclusions on 'DOs and DONTs' from the experiences carried out in other cities: no standard recipe emerges, and no direct transferability should be attempted at the level of specific measures. On the other hand, some useful lessons can be learnt at the higher level of policy formulation, where cities with roughly comparable mobility contexts could possibly share basic policy orientations.
Achieving the desired results
- Even more than was expected, the CIVITAS experience so far has confirmed that complex and ambitious policies can only be evaluated in the medium/long term. This is due:
- to the inherently long lead time needed to produce tangible effects, notably for all the measures that, directly or indirectly, entail a change in the culture and behaviour of citizens;
- to the scale of implementation, which is initially limited and can therefore hardly produce results that are both tangible and meaningful.
- CIVITAS I has shown that to cope with such intrinsic difficulties cities should:
- preferably identify a limited set of priority goals and concentrate on the swift achievement of tangible results in those areas where priority goals have been set, without however renouncing the ambition of developing integrated strategies, that is the di