MIRACLES - Multi Initiatives for Rationalised Accessibility and Clean, Liveable Environments
Overview
Background & policy context:
In recent years, increased private mobility in metropolitan areas has caused a rapid and wide decrease in the quality of urban environment. The reduction of transport-related negative externalities encompassing mainly congestion, poor air quality and excessive noise levels, as well as growing energy consumption is a clear challenge facing European authorities at all levels.
The MIRACLES project was part of the European Commission’s CIVITAS Initiative, and consisted of a wide range of integrated, innovative and sustainable urban transport measures. CIVITAS I involved 19 cities throughout Europe, each working in one of four projects (MIRACLES, TELLUS, TRENDSETTER and VIVALDI).
Objectives:
The MIRACLES project’s four strategic objectives were:
- reduction of transport-related environmental impacts at local level;
- increased urban accessibility;
- enhanced economic efficiency through better transport management;
- overall improvement of citizens’ quality of life.
These goals led to the following specific objectives and targets reflecting the specific measures adopted:
- Significant reduction in transport-related emissions:
- - Link urban transport pricing to environmental vehicle performance;
- - Ensure substantial air quality improvement in Laboratory area;
- - Identify high emitting vehicles and target for enforcement.
- Significant reduction in congestion:
- - Improve the co-ordination of urban goods delivery service;
- - Rationalise road space use via road pricing schemes for passenger mobility;
- - Rationalise road space use via parking reservation systems for goods delivery.
- Demonstration and uptake of clean transport vehicles:
- - Demonstration and uptake of state-of-the-art clean transport vehicles, Euro IV standard;
- - Uptake of targeted clean vehicles (esp. buses, e-scooters and vans), Euro III and IV standard;
- - Widen business exposure to clean vehicle technology and develop the market.
- Modal shift for trips having their origin or destination in the clean area:
- - Improve mode share of bus, cycling and walking through an integrated policy package;
- - Manage mobility demand through the application of new ITS technology and through education, consultation and stakeholder involvement;
- - Resulting from application of access control and road pricing scheme to Clean Area and provision of attractive alternatives.
- Added-value integrated services:
- - Personalised real-time access to multi-modal traveller information;
- - Management of mobility demand through the application of new ITS technology and through education, consultation and stakeholder involvement.
Methodology:
The MIRACLES project involved the four cities of Winchester, Rome, Barcelona and Cork, supported by many other local partners including local authorities, public transport operators, transport organisations, academic institutions and consultants.
To achieve its objectives according to CIVITAS call for tender, the MIRACLES sites designed a common, integrated urban scheme for policy strategies based on the CIVITAS measures. (These measures were applied in a co-ordinated manner allowing the impacts of individual measures, clustered measures and the complete horizontal integrated package to be identified according to the site specific implementation plans).
All the work carried out within MIRACLES was designed to reduce the impact of vehicles in urban areas. To achieve this aim work was grouped into eight main themes. These were:
- reduction of high-polluting vehicles;
- sustainable parking policies;
- improvements to public transport;
- promotion of cycling;
- improving freight efficiency;
- promotion of sustainable travel;
- travel information systems;
- reducing the impact of public and private fleets.
A crucial task of the entire project was the evaluation of measures implemented.
The MIRACLES evaluation methodology was developed considering that each of the four participating cities were very different in character, scale and degree of sustainable development and initially a ‘bottom-up’ approach in choosing the impacts and indicators to be measured was used. This bottom-up approach was based upon MAESTRO and CONVERGE evaluation guidelines. In parallel, guidance from METEOR (a horizontal EC-funded project with the objective of evaluating all CIVITAS cities) led to the top-down infusion of METEOR core indicators into the evaluation plans. Evaluation results were reported at two levels: the measure-level and the city-level. A common template was developed for each level with their structure and content based on discussions between METEOR and the CIVITAS Projects. The templates ensured both a common reporting format and that all evaluation relevant information was reported and disseminated in a concise manner. The approach also permitted to better interpret and formulate key findings of each measure, and enabled a series of ‘headline results’ an
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