Who wouldn’t wish to have easy, safe, and sustainable mobility in their cities? Yet, many residents of cities across the Baltic Sea Region find themselves in heavy car dependence or struggling with infrastructure that doesn’t support walking and cycling. City planners and mobility experts want to change this, but smaller cities often lack the resources and expertise to track progress, test the solutions and make informed decisions about urban mobility. Without proper data collection, monitoring and evaluation they can't identify the most effective solutions, adjust policies, or adopt a high-quality Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan.

Sustainable urban mobility is an important building block on the way to achieving the climate neutrality goals. By prioritizing active mobility modes, such as walking and cycling cities can reduce their carbon emissions, and create healthier, more livable environments. Moving away from car dependency will eventually decrease congestion and noise pollution, making urban spaces more attractive for residents.

The SUMPs for BSR project is on a mission to equip small and mid-sized cities with the necessary tools and capacities to make it easier for them to adopt the quality SUMPs in their cities and effectively monitor and evaluate their actions. Bringing together mobility experts, local authorities, and researchers from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania Sweden and Poland, our transnational team helps cities make informed decisions on their sustainable mobility plans. Through workshops, pilot activities, and collaboration, cities learn from each other, test new approaches and co-create the right tools to measure and improve urban mobility. Sharing best practices ensures that cities do not have to tackle these challenges on their own. Ultimately, these actions contribute to the well-being of commuters, parents cycling with their children, elderly residents, and planners striving for better cities for their residents.

As a result, decision-makers and mobility planners have a clear way forward. With improved data collection, monitoring and evaluation using the M&E framework and evidence to prove the effectivity of the solutions tested on a small scale using the model for experimenting with active mobility measures, they can create greener, smarter, and more inclusive, accessible, safe and resilient transport systems that work for everyone. The knowledge gathered through the collaboration and testing of the solutions within the consortium is shared in the training package on SUMPs, which will make a long-lasting impact on the capacity of the small and mid-sized cities of the BSR to adopt and utilise the SUMPs on their path towards climate neutrality and quality of life for their residents.