Improving multilevel policy mixes for sustainable urban mobility transition

Abstract

Transitioning to sustainable urban mobility in the EU requires a complex policy mix covering various transport modalities and levels of governance. Yet, existing studies focus mainly on a single modality or governance level as unit of analysis. To fill this gap, this article combines the literatures on policy mixes and on urban mobility transition to investigate the relations between various policies influencing the transition to sustainable urban mobility across governance levels. Analysing data from 32 interviews focused on Dutch cities, two key conflicts are identified as hampering the transition to sustainable urban mobility: i) a bias of national funding towards solving bottlenecks through infrastructure development; ii) a significant influence of the national level on the local level, while the former is hardly influenced by others. The analysis suggests that these conflicts might be overcome by shifting the emphasis of national funding to mobility in a broader sense and institutionalizing multilevel cooperation.