Setting Targets for Local Authorities to Increase Their Capacity to Develop and Implement Sustainable Transport Measures

Abstract

In order to assist cities implement their mobility plans, it is essential to analyse which factors might influence their capacity to plan, develop, and implement mobility measures. A four-step process was developed to help cities perform such an audit. In the first step, a comprehensive characterization and contextualisation survey was conducted to understand the context in which cities operated and their situation with respect to mobility planning. Then, each partner city assessed its own capacity to implement mobility plans according to a set of key capacity indicators related to organizational, legal, political, and societal aspects. The results indicated the areas in which each authority needed to focus in order to improve its capacity to implement general mobility plans. In the final step, each city considered their mobility plans and linked these to the capacity indicator. This provided each city with a bespoke set of specific capacity indicator targets which needed to be worked on to successfully apply their mobility plans. The four-step approach presented in this chapter is a transferable tool that can be applied by city authorities to understand and prioritize the capacity needs of transport departments.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Description of Challenges

Challenge area		Challenge description
1	Sustainability thinking	Shaping sustainable mobility requires sustainability thinking among the staff and those who are involved in the process. Anchoring a sustainable mindset is one of the biggest challenges for local authorities, as this cannot be dictated by leadership, rather it is a way of looking at things that needs to develop gradually. The LA must always provide impulses and constantly raise awareness of the issue
2	Institutional cooperation	The challenge illustrates the need to improve the cooperation between local and regional authorities and decision makers who are directly and indirectly involved in the development of sustainable mobility measures. The aim is to motivate the various municipal departments to develop a common vision, to participate and to commit to projects
3	Systematic staff deployment and development	In recent years, the field of mobility has become increasingly broad, complex and difficult to penetrate. Although an incredibly large pool of knowledge and experience is available in general, mobility departments often lack the capacity to develop their own technical know-how in all mobility areas. A major challenge is to develop the needed competencies within the staff systematically, with a view to the long-term, ideally in such a way that synergy effects between the projects can be exploited
4	Project management and monitoring	Effective and efficient project management forms the basis for successful projects. This aspect is still a big barrier and often leads to serious delays or even the failure of mobility projects. The challenge is to critically support and optimize project management and monitoring processes
5	Knowledge management and transfer	Shaping mobility depends to a large extent on experience. The challenge is to enhance and establish a sustainable process for knowledge management/knowledge transfer among mobility departments and stakeholders. The aim is to apply and try out established methods in order to learn from experience and from that of others. It is about applying these findings to new projects and transmitting them to new employees
6	Understanding and applying innovative financing	The challenge is to increase the ability to identify funding sources and to use innovative financing methods. This requires capacity to identify, evaluate, adapt and apply financing methods to projects for which there is no funding available or urban funds are insufficient
7	Innovative procurement	The challenge is to integrate sustainability criteria and requirements to procurement processes and sensitize procurement agents to sustainability aspects and opportunities arising from the procurement reform
8	Understanding political interests and decision making	No matter how well planned a measure may be, without political backing, it will not be implemented. The challenge is to increase the capacity to assess political moods and to affect political bodies through evidence and argument
9	Understanding legal and regulatory framework	As many policy areas are directly or indirectly affected by the development of mobility measures, various legal and regulatory frameworks need to be considered. Some of these regulations also may change over time. The challenge is to further develop strategies and skills, to access the legal framework conditions and to take them into account for planning and implementation of mobility measures
10	Citizen participation	The challenge is to increase the capacity to identify and actively involve citizens in the development process of measures and strategies. This requires a precise understanding of benefits and concrete methods of citizen participation. Citizens need to be informed about measures, goals and backgrounds in order to engage with the measures
11	Estimating the feasibility and acceptance of measures	It is particularly difficult to obtain the necessary political support for innovative measures when there is a lack of experience and a high degree of uncertainty in terms of feasibility and acceptance. The challenge is to use methods to try out innovative measures in a scaled version, in a closed system beforehand, to gain a better understanding for upcoming problems and to be able to make predictions for workability and acceptance
12	Interaction and cooperation with business partners	The interaction and cooperation with business partners has become increasingly important in order to implement new mobility services (e.g. sharing services). The challenge is to combine new offers with existing services, adapt them to the local characteristics and make them attractive to citizens. The conditions must be attractive for providers to offer such services in the city. Close cooperation with business partners is a key factor
13	Identification and utilization of synergy effects	The challenge is to identify early connections and dependencies between mobility strategies and measures or between different mobility services
14	Use of innovative technologies and data-collection methods	The challenge for the cities and the mobility departments is to raise awareness of technologies, tools and methods for the effective and efficient collection and evaluation of data and it’s use for the planning, implementation and evaluation of mobility measures. It is also a matter of looking across other departments to see who is already collecting certain data, or who might still be interested in certain data. Multiple use of the data and the exploitation of synergy effects is particularly important
15	Application of research knowledge and adaption of good-practice examples	The challenge is about a greater application of research findings and knowledge. It is also about a better understanding of the transferability of good-practice examples. The identification and understanding of contextual factors that are relevant to the success or failure of measures is challenging and that must be taken into account when trying to adapt measures to the specific conditions of a city

Appendix 2: Description of Self-assessment Indicators

Organizational (O)
Indicator’s name	Indicator’s description
Subcategory: Coordination/Cooperation (OC)
Cooperation	Level of collaboration among the LA and the organizations that participate in all stages of planning and implementation of a plan (financing, procurement of products and services, public–private partnerships)
Decision makers	Number of policy makers involved in planning and implementation
Operational autonomy	Organization’s autonomy to implement plans independently of other stakeholders’ approval
Financial autonomy	Financial independence from central government and other financial agents
Interdepartmental cooperation	Level and frequency of cooperation and networking between the involved departments inside the same organization
Subcategory: Process (OP)
Implementation rate	Number of implemented or planned measures
Monitoring	Project-management activities to control technical and processual issues
Punctuality	Rate of compliance with deadlines with clear milestones’ identification
Budget management	Ability to realistically include plans/measures in the organization’s budget
Progress control	Regular process evaluations to determine gaps and flaws in the plan’s workflow execution, avoiding delays and redundant work
Risk awareness	Frequency of identification and assessment of possible risks that may appear during all the project’s lifetime
Adaptability/contingency plans	Capacity to adjust plans/measures in reaction to an extraordinary event. Existence of risk-control measures defined to control the impact of the risks that affect the project
Process learning	Organization’s acknowledgement of internalizing past experiences, both positive and negative, to solve present/future issues that may arise
Subcategory: Financial sources (OF)
Financial sources	Efficient use of national/international, public/private investment sources
Understanding (IF) innovative financing	An understanding of the benefits that innovative financing methods have on the financial capacity of the organization
Identification of IF	Ability to identify innovative financing opportunities
Training of IF	Number of people in the organization who are trained in innovative financing
Use of IF	Organization’s employment of innovative financing resources
IF and local economy	Economic status of city increased through projects funded by innovative finance
Innovative business model	Organization’s development of Innovative Business Models in the projects developed/implemented
Subcategory: Technical/Data resource (OT)
Logistical resources	Available resources’ quantity/quality needed to properly complete the tasks required for planning and implementation. Easy access to logistical tools
Communication resources	Available resources’ quantity/quality needed to properly complete the tasks required for planning and implementation. Easy access to communication tools
Technological resources	Available resources’ quantity/quality needed to properly complete the tasks required for planning and implementation. Easy access to technological tools
Use of new technologies	Willingness to use new technologies and familiarity with their application for data collection
Data availability	Availability of the necessary data required to complete all project’s tasks
Data collection	Availability of necessary tools, networks and resources to efficiently collect data from diverse sources and in different formats
Data analysis	Availability of the necessary tools, networks and capabilities needed to efficiently analyse data collected of diverse sources and formats
Data sharing	Being able to retrieve valuable information as an output from the data analysis. Quantity and quality of data shared among departments (paper-form, electronic, etc.)
Subcategory: Human resources (OH)
Staff’s commitment	Staff’s alignment, in attitude and performance, with the goals of the organization
Realistic goals and priorities	Link between managers’ notion of the team’s capacity, and the real team’s capacity to deliver the expected outputs
Participatory management	Level of bidirectional communication between various management levels of the organization. Global knowledge increment
Effective delegation	Each member of the organization has a clear vision of her participation and responsibilities for the successful completion of the Plans. Clear understanding of one’s role and participatory timeline
Team's trust in processes/tools	All staffers involved in the plans’ planning and implementation phases feel completely comfortable with the tools and methodologies needed to successfully carry out all projects’ tasks
Early engagement	Everyone participating in the project is involved from the beginning enabling all stakeholders to have a full view of the entire process
Team’s dimension	Human resources available to complete all the project’s tasks
Team’s skills	Knowledge, competences and abilities of the team to meet project’s needs
Supporting resources	Responsiveness to operational/process inefficiencies
Subcategory: Working environment (OW)
Regular assessment/self-assessment	Identification of strengths and weaknesses of each member of the team
Staff’s needs	Team members’ needs are encouraged to be transparent inside the organization
Continuous learning	Permanent effort in keeping the staff updated regarding tools and techniques that would enable the project. Includes the level of evolvement in workshops, seminars, conferences, etc
Turnover rate	Reflects the stability in the composition of the team
Political (P)
Political commitment	Defines how the project will be led and if it is a priority in the political agenda
Coordinated institutional agendas	Consistency in national/regional/local priorities. Correspondence between the plan and the national political agenda
Coordination/cooperation	Effective networking between the national departments of transport, land use, mobility, energy, etc
Continuity	Commitment to the continuation of the project independently of the authorities elected; the plan’s progress is maintained unimpeded when moving from one political framework to the next one elected
Financing	Existence of financial programs within the national general budget to undertake the implementation of the Plan
Legal (L)
Legal and regulatory framework	Contribution of legal and regulatory frameworks to efficient decision-making processes
Legal power delegation	Organization’s autonomy to solve its own legal issues regarding the planning and implementation of the projects
Understanding of applied legal framework	All applicable legal framework should be clearly understood by all the involved stakeholders
Procurement decision criterions	Way of using decision criteria in the public procurement procedure (price, fuel etc.)
Societal (S)
Public awareness	Use of communication channels related to the project, its design, implementation and impact included
Public participation	Actions taken to engage citizens in the development of the project
Public acceptance	Level of willingness to support and engage with the implementation
Media reaction	Responsiveness of social media