Rationale

Not everything turns out exactly as planned - sometimes it is for the worse, sometimes for the better. It is important to look carefully to see what went well and what did not go well as there is something to learn from every experience. This evaluation includes both the impact of your efforts on urban mobility and beyond (level of achievement of vision, objectives and targets) and the effectiveness of the planning process itself. It is possible that one went well and the other went wrong.

To identify and understand these successes and failures, you need to involve engaged and affected citizens and actively listen to what they say about the process and its outcomes. These aspects are essential in order to learn and improve your skills and knowledge, which, in turn, helps you to provide a solid basis for the next planning cycle.

Aims

• Evaluate the planning process, the SUMP and its implementation with an eye to understanding what led to successes and failures.

• Enhance your understanding of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning process and overall measure impact with the help of citizens and stakeholders.

• Gather lessons for the preparation of the next SUMP generation.

Tasks

• Evaluate the successes and failures of the SUMP through analysing the strengths and weaknesses of all phases and steps as well as their final outcomes.

  • Analyse the process looking back to the entire cycle. This can include, for example, participatory observation, focus groups or interviews. Use these to critically review the effectiveness of stakeholder and citizen involvement so as to enhance participation activities in later stages and in future plans.

  • Actively involve key stakeholders and citizens to identify accomplishments and improvable steps of the process from their perspective. After years of Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning, people standing outside the process can provide a quite different view and might have observed important aspects that you do not see.

  • For impact evaluation, you can begin to assess the broader impacts of the implemented measures once a sufficient number of results are available. Analyse what went well and what went wrong. List objectives and strategic targets that could not be achieved, but that are still on the agenda

• Communicate the ‘lessons learned’ to the core team and key stakeholders (e.g. the ‘steering group’).

• Reinforce success stories and ensure that you learn from mistakes in the next round of planning.

Timing and coordination

• Review the effectiveness of the planning and citizen engagement process during the implementation phase.

• Review the overall impact (i.e. did you get closer to the vision?) after a sufficient number of measures have been implemented.

Checklist