Beyond the plan: What cities need from national SUMP support

Yet practical difficulties become more visible as cities move from preparing plans to implementing measures, monitoring results and maintaining progress over time.

A new SUMPs for BSR report examines national SUMP support in Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden. It compares existing support with the needs identified by municipalities and mobility stakeholders and asks where national support can make the greatest difference.

The findings are particularly timely as the revised TEN-T Regulation has strengthened the role of national SUMP support, requiring Member States to designate National SUMP Contact Points and establish national SUMP programmes to support TEN-T urban nodes.

Support needs continue after the plan is prepared

The report identifies the transition from planning to implementation as the largest recurring gap.

Strategic frameworks, planning traditions and guidance are already available in different forms across the seven countries. However, municipalities face greater challenges when plans need to be translated into funded measures, coordinated between organisations, monitored with reliable evidence and sustained over time.

At this stage, different constraints often come together. Municipalities may need sufficient staff and specialist expertise, stable financing, clear organisational ownership, suitable data and monitoring capacity, cooperation between authorities, and continued political and public support.

The report describes this pattern as an implementation gradient: the further municipalities move from preparing a strategy towards implementation, evaluation and long-term integration into regular practice, the more visible resource, governance and capacity constraints become.

This means that national support should not focus only on helping municipalities prepare plans. The later stages of implementation, monitoring, learning and continuation also need to be considered.

Different municipalities need different kinds of support

The analysis also shows that one support model will not meet the needs of every municipality.

Smaller or less experienced municipalities often need straightforward guidance, practical templates, access to expertise and proportionate approaches to data and monitoring. Municipalities with more established SUMP practice may instead require advanced support for implementation, monitoring and evaluation, institutional coordination or scaling tested solutions.

Municipality size is only one factor. Organisational capacity, SUMP maturity and territorial context also influence what kind of support is useful.

Data and monitoring provide a good example. Municipalities do not simply need more data. They need appropriate methodologies, compatible datasets, meaningful indicators and the analytical capacity to turn monitoring results into decisions.

Governance creates another challenge. Urban mobility often follows functional travel patterns rather than municipal borders. Where several municipalities or organisations share responsibility, practical arrangements for joint planning, data sharing, financing and decision-making become increasingly important.

Political commitment and public acceptance also matter. Technically sound mobility measures can be difficult to implement without effective stakeholder engagement, communication and support for behavioural change.

Strengthen and connect what already exists

The report does not conclude that countries need to build entirely new SUMP support systems.

All seven project countries already provide relevant support through different combinations of national guidance, transport-system planning, funding instruments, competence structures, data systems, metropolitan cooperation and sustainable mobility policies.

The key question is whether this support is practical, accessible and continuous enough to help municipalities throughout the SUMP cycle.

The report therefore recommends strengthening and connecting existing mechanisms. National support should provide a coherent pathway from planning to implementation, while allowing assistance to be adapted to different levels of municipal capacity and SUMP maturity. Practical access to expertise, stronger data and monitoring support, cooperation across administrative boundaries and regular knowledge exchange between municipalities and other actors are all part of this picture.

Countries do not need identical national SUMP programmes. The overall direction identified by the report is instead a combination of:

a common national framework + differentiated municipal support + practical implementation assistance + sustained knowledge exchange.

From findings to practical support

SUMPs for BSR has also developed resources that can complement existing national support, including the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, M&E Plan Template and Indicator Selector Tool, tested approaches for active mobility data collection, a model for experimenting with active mobility measures, the SUMP Training Programme, the SUMP Clinic approach and the BSR SUMP Competence Centre.

These are not intended as a separate support system. National authorities and National SUMP Contact Points can select and adapt relevant resources to complement their existing guidance, training, technical assistance and knowledge-sharing activities.

Read the full D3.1 report: Report on the common needs for national support mechanisms for SUMPs in BSR countries.

A concise decision-maker briefing and a visual one-pager are also available, summarising the main gaps, recommendations and practical implications for National SUMP Contact Points and other national support actors.

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