This booklet sets out recommendations to Governments on Implementing Sustainable Urban Travel Policies. These recommendations were defined in the ECMT project of the same name conducted jointly with the OECD from 1998-2001. ECMT Ministers of Transport approved the recommendations at their Council in Lisbon, Portugal in May 2001. The three-year study was designed to identify why sustainable urban travel policy strategies have proven so difficult for countries to implement, and, more generally, how countries and cities can bridge the gap between policy recommendations and their implementation. The findings and conclusions of the project, described in the Final Report of the work published separately, has shown that countries are making progress in developing policy schemes to confront congestion, urban sprawl and in tackling the environmental problems associated with unsustainable urban travel patterns. However the trends revealed in the project show that serious difficulties persist in putting these policy plans to work and in seeing the impact of policy actions reflected in urban travel data. Comprised of three principal parts — a series of workshops, a survey of urban travel patterns and trends in over 160 cities, and a series of national urban travel policy reviews — the project demonstrated that all levels of Government have important roles to play in assuring that effective, sectorally integrated policy options for sustainable urban travel are identified and implemented. It showed that National Governments in particular can act as catalysts for improving sustainable travel practices in urban areas. (A)
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