Quito, Ecuador, 18th October 2016 

The transport and development community, meeting together in Quito, Ecuador on the occasion of Habitat III, welcomes the New Urban Agenda´s recognition of the broad contribution of sustainable urban mobility to sustainable urbanization.

We support the vision for urban mobility set out in the New Urban Agenda – but it now needs to be implemented.

The transport and development community are organized and ready to play their role to deliver on the New Urban Agenda´s vision, however, we need national governments throughout the world to provide the necessary national support and enabling frameworks to stimulate the transformation of urban mobility. 

Concerted and comprehensive action is needed to cope with the additional 2.3 billion people expected to be living in urban areas by 2050. A rapid expansion and transformation to urban mobility systems based on walking, cycling and public transport is required.  Without a significant step up in action and support by national governments on urban transport cities will suffer from growing congestion, road deaths/injuries, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.       

While much action will be taken at the city level, and by Non State Actors and much financing will come from international and private sources – however they need national support and enabling frameworks for urban mobility to catalyze action.

The national policy frameworks will depend on national circumstances and priorities but can include: polices, laws, capacity building, expert networks, guidance documents, delegated powers and financing. 

This is a Call for Action from a broad range of transport and development actors to national governments, to now provide the necessary support and national policy frameworks to enable cities to deliver the transformation of urban mobility set out in the New Urban Agenda. 

****

Quotes from key members of the transport and urban development community: 

“Support from national government is the missing link that we need in order to transform urban mobility at scale. National governments need to step up and deliver the necessary coordination, leadership and resources to enable cities to create change — and they need to act now” – Holger Dalkmann, Co-Chair of the Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport.  

“We look forward to working with the SLoCaT Partnership to accelerate action on sustainable urban transport and track the transport relevant components of the New Urban Agenda in the next years. We will bring parties together to scale up action on transport addresses both urban development and climate change issues, particularly in developing and emerging economies” – Andre Dzikus, Programme Manager, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT).  

“Habitat III needs to kick-start a rapid transformation in urban mobility systems and investment in cities across the world. The multilateral development banks (MDBs) are committed to supporting investments in sustainable urban mobility, but for projects to be bankable we need the right national and local policies and plans to be in place, and that will require more technical assistance for building capacity and scaling up investment project preparation,” – Tyrrell Duncan, Technical Advisor (Transport), Asian Development Bank and Chairman MDB Working Group on Sustainable Transport.

“Our new Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative is a very concrete contribution towards the implementation of the New Urban Agenda. It will help mobilize more than one billion USD for sustainable mobility in cities, it will work with 1000 urban mobility experts and support innovative projects world-wide in order to support the mobility transition (Verkehrswende) in cities around the globe.” – Dr. T. Roediger-Vorwerk Dep. Dir. Gen. Environment, Infrastructure, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Germany 

 # # #

The Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT) is a global multi-stakeholder partnership of over 90 organizations (representing UN organizations, Multilateral and Bilateral development organizations, NGOs and Foundations, Academe and the Business Sector). SLoCaT promotes the integration of sustainable transport in global policies on sustainable development and climate change in support of its overarching goal to mobilize global support for sustainable, low carbon transport and thereby reduce the growth of GHG emissions generated by land transport in developing countries and maximize the contribution of transport to poverty eradication and sustainable development. For more information, please see: www.slocat.net

The SLoCaT Partnership has been tracking the Habitat III process and negotiations and has produced a number of Knowledge Products and reports based on the preparatory events, Policy Documents and National Reports. In recent months we have provided a “transport” analysis of the different drafts of the New Urban Agenda and made specific suggestions for improvements. SLoCaT and its members are also hosting a number of transport events in Surabaya and Quito. All information is publically available at: http://www.slocat.net/new-urban-agenda

For more information: Cornie Huizenga, SLoCaT cornie.huizenga@slocatpartnership.org +86 139 0194 9332