The strategic objective of the SUMP is to sort and manage the system of urban mobility in the coming years, with a medium- to long-term (10 years) vision and results, focusing on the citizens and their mobility needs. A participatory approach is envisaged, involving citizens, sector operators and other stakeholders, from the very beginning of its definition.
Context analysis
Pavia, as every Municipality, is appointed to regulate the transport sector, namely by (a) planning, ruling, and control public local transport (b) managing roads (viability) (c) developing sustainable and innovative mobility. Specifically, Pavia municipality approved the Urban Traffic Plan in 1998 and the Mobility Urban Plan in 2007; Pavia Municipality has deployed a plan on parking lots. Pavia’s Public Local Transport (PLT) covers the city and 8 nearby municipalities, with 27 lines, 80 buses (33 propelled by methane), 459.000 annual rides and 300.000 kilometers per year. Noctibus, a night call service, totals 51.000 kilometers. Globally, transported passengers are 5,5 Million a year. Buses are run by LINE, the transport operator to which the Municipality has outsourced the service.
Measures to guarantee horizontal and vertical integration and participation of all main stakeholders
The City Committee established the Permanent Observatory on Sustainable Mobility, whose members are the Deputy Mayor for Mobility and Transport, representatives of professional associations, of the University of Pavia, and of the other municipalities of the Pavia Province, whose duties are to plan the intervention policies to enhance sustainable mobility. The Observatory will be the privileged interlocutor in the path of shaping the SUMP and the related Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). The activity of processing the SUMP will be accompanied by a communication plan that includes general activities (citizens’ forums, information provided through the media) and targeted actions towards specific categories of stakeholders (meetings, interviews, questionnaires).
Monitoring and evaluation procedures
One of the specific characteristics of Pavia’s SUMP is the integration with the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), the two sharing the development of a set of indicators, regular reporting and the ongoing evaluation of both the performance of the Plan of its potential environmental impacts. Thus, shared assessment of the plan will be ex-ante, ongoing and ex-post.
The decision to integrate the elaboration process of the SUMP with the methodological procedures of the SEA, according to the European guidelines, is an important element of rational planning: urban sustainability issues relate and integrate perfectly with the environmental strategic plan.