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CIVITAS VANGUARD
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| CIVITAS - ELAN |
| CIVITAS-ELAN is a project of strategic importance to its partners and funding institutions. The mayors of the cities of Ljubljana, Gent, Zagreb, Brno and Porto have agreed to a common mission statement “To ‘mobilise’ our citizens working with them to develop clean mobility solutions for vital cities, ensuring health and access for all.” |
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| Description of work |
The five cities cooperate in the CIVITAS Programme on the basis of a clear set of common objectives, based on the principle of “putting the citizen first”. The focus on citizen participation has been engrained in the work plan of many measures.
For each of the CIVITAS policy fields, a common set of headline objectives and corresponding project goals have been agreed, and the cities have developed a programme of 68 measures.
The project consortium is extremely experienced, some partners were involved in CIVITAS I and II from various perspectives. The consortium has defined a highly integrated workplan with common measures and a range of other cooperation and exchange arrangements.
The ELAN cities are representative of a growing number of dynamic, large or medium-sized national and regional centres with a strong cultural background.
As encouraged by the CIVITAS Plus call, a city from the New Member States (NMS) (Ljubljana) is the project coordinator. The other city from an NMS country is Brno - a learning city in the CIVITAS-ELAN project. In addition, Zagreb - a leading city within CIVITAS-ELAN - is from a candidate country thus integrating the CIVITAS initiative in the enlargement process. The workplan addresses topics of specific interest to cities in the NMS.
This financial commitment is based on a strong political will, a factor that will be recognised as a major actor of sustainable development policy in Europe.
As a policy-driven project, CIVITAS-ELAN will make significant contributions to major global, EU and national policy processes. Impact and process evaluation have a prominent role in the workplan. In responding to citizens’ needs, CIVITAS-ELAN has identified 18 common headline objectives for each CIVITAS policy field:
- Increasing energy efficiency
- Using alternative fuels
- Cleaning up vehicle fleets (electric, hybrid, integrated strategies)
- Implementing effective, high quality mobility solutions
- Planning intermodal infrastructure with public participation
- Charging for access
- Managing public space and access
- Improving mobility management
- Making walking and cycling more attractive
- Establishing a mobility dialogue with the citizens
- Developing integrated & target-group specific safety/ security strategies
- Increasing road safety
- Improving security in PT
- Implementing flexible mobility services
- Rationalising freight distribution
- Giving priority to clean modes
- Enhancing traveller information & ticketing
- Introducing telematics for clean modes
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| Expected Results and Exploitation Plans |
The measures of CIVITAS ELAN are expected to have significant impact in solving the problems of:
- Congestion and related pollution as most crucial problems
- Other issues including climate change, energy consumption, noise, public transport quality and pressure on space.
- Improving public transport quality (especially demanded by citizens)
- Increasing the share of walking and cycling
- Supporting freight innovative delivery solutions
- Implementing innovative demand management
- Using of clean and energy-efficient vehicles
The idea of the four common measures in CIVITAS-ELAN is to have intensive cooperation on topics of strategic importance, going beyond the exchange in other fields. The following are the CIVITAS-ELAN common measures:
- Energy management of public fleets (led by the City of Gent)
- Participatory intermodal infrastructure planning (led by the City of Brno)
- Comprehensive safety and security strategies (led by the City of Zagreb)
- Integrated freight policy development (led by the City of Ljubljana)
The common measures will focus on the elaboration of common strategies, exchange of know-how and build up common tools, such as joint green procurement, energy management tools and urban freight roundtables.
The idea to use joint procurement of clean vehicles - particularly of hybrid buses - in order to build up a critical mass and have a strong position towards manufacturers, which still consider clean vehicles as niches products and sometimes only provide small numbers of such vehicles. This can be further extended to the whole CIVITAS community.
One of the main issues related to sustainable mobility is how to raise the level of citizens’ responsibility for addressing mobility problems and implementing solutions (to influence the people’s behaviour and lifestyles). If decision-makers really want to consider the peoples’ needs and to engage them in implementing quality solutions, this is only possible through consultation and broad dialogue with citizens - with much better approaches than were practiced in Europe so far.
The CIVITAS-ELAN project is tackling this issue with the innovative experimentation of inclusive governance in transport planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. With this approach we are putting the “partnership principle” - one of the fundamental principles of the EU Cohesion Policy - into practice in all 5 CIVITAS-ELAN partner cities.
An overall Strategy for citizens’ engagement will be prepared with cooperation of all project partners at the initial stage of the project. The Strategy will define main objectives, actors, principles, standards and indicators for successful public participation, and especially the working methodology for the whole process.
The Strategy will be the basis for the development of partner cities’ Action Plans on citizens’ engagement. Transport related measures in partner cities will be interlaced with inclusive governance methods which will depend on the type of specific measure, but they will all strive to improve the existing participatory processes. The minimal standards used will be at least: appropriate informing of citizens, opening consultation processes, and taking due account on citizens’ comments and proposals. But the project has much bigger ambitions in innovative practices of effective public participation in mobility related issues.
The Action Plans on citizens’ engagement in all partner cities will consider the types of measures in each city, and the level of participatory democracy practices. Innovative and effective experimentation of participatory processes in transport related measures will be implemented. Creation of local sustainable mobility platforms will be used as a tool for creative dialogue on planning and implementation of mobility related measures. |
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| Contacts |
Project Coordinator:
Zdenka Simonovic
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Project Manager:
Siegfried Rupprecht
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Project Evaluation Manager:
Dirk Engels
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Project Dissemination Manager:
Jörg Kastelic
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