Rise of a New Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning Paradigm in Local Governance: Does the SUMP Make a Difference?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper aims at exploring the institutional settings, practices, and barriers of sustainable mobility in cities without a tradition of integrated transport planning and differences between cities that have adopted or not a SUMP. The theme is relevant and timely. In fact, many EU cities have adopted SUMPs to implement new urban mobility policies and it is now time to assess whether the new paradigm proposed by the EU is working effectively. The methodology proposed to assess the SUMPs is based on data collected using interviews and an online questionnaire survey among stakeholders who substantially influence the urban planning praxis. The analysis reveals that monitoring, evaluation, and public involvement are underestimated among local politicians, that confirms the results of other studies. Despite such limitations, SUMP brings substantial benefits to cities of all sizes and even in the initial phase of their sustainable mobility paradigm change.
I think the paper can be published after the following revisions have been dealt with.
Among the factors influencing implementation of the new transport planning paradigm mentioned in section 1.1:
- safety and security issues are not mentioned, whereas these have been proven to be relevant in affecting travelers’ choices in particular in railways and local public transport, see for instance: dell'Olio, L., Ibeas, A., Cecìn, P., (2010) “Modelling user perception of bus transit quality Transp. Policy 17, 388–397; Coppola P. and Silvestri F (2020) “Assessing travelers’ safety and security perception in railway stations” Case Studies on Transport Policy 8, 1127–1136; Karlaftis, M.G., Golias, J., Papadimitriou, E., 2001. Transit quality as an integrated traffic management strategy: measuring perceived service. J. Publ. Transp. 4 (1), 27–44).
- ICT/ITS development does not make explicit mention to Connected and Autonomous Vehicles as one of the main drivers of change in urban mobility, (see for instance P. Coppola and D. Esztergar-Kiss (Eds) (2019) Autonomous vehicles and future mobility – Elsevier)
- new evaluation methods needs to be further elaborated: is the paradigm of Cost-Benefits analysis still valid ? what kind of sustainable indicators need to be incorporated in the analysis ?
Morover, the methodology proposed to collect data is that of structured interviews with relevant stakeholders in urban mobility (Section 2). It should be noted that structured interviews are exercises that involve the active participation of interviewees. The stakeholders interviewed can modify their perception of several factors unknown or poorly evaluated a-priori. Therefore, after the interview, participants might be prone to change their subjective perceptions about the factors investigated. (see for instance Papa et al. (2017). “The learning process of accessibility instrument developers: Testing the tools in planning practice.” Transportation Research Part A, Vol. 104, pp.108-120). We understand that any experiential learning factors has not been taken into consideration in the study, but at least the issue should be mentioned.
MINOR REVISIONS:
- Numbers of sections needs to be checked (e.g. section 2)
Author Response
We thank you very much for your valuable comments. We made a language check and shortened some parts of the text to make it more concise. We also reflected on the suggestions of the reviewers and added some more information in the paper on particular topics.
Our response to your points is in the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Since your data collection and analysis refers to Czech cities, I suggest you to include “Czech cities” in both the title and the abstract of your paper. Please also include “Czech cities” in the Keywords. Otherwise, the reader cannot understand which is the focus of your research.
Section 1. Introduction: My suggestion is to include a detailed historical look at the evolution of the content of SUMPs worldwide. Please also include some definitions and the associated terminology for SUMPs. It may by possible that not all readers are familiar with the concept of SUMPs.
Page 2: Heading “1. Defining the transition to a sustainable transport planning paradigm” must be “2. Defining the transition to a sustainable transport planning paradigm” since you already have “1. Introduction” (page 1). Please also correct all the subsequent headings. Please also note that all the subheadings of heading 3. Results, have incorrect numbering. In any case, please check the numbering of all the sections and the subsections.
Page 3, lines 108-109, “…from conventional planning to new transport planning [16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21].” Please enhance the text which is associated to the specific six (6) references. The transition from the so-called “conventional planning” process to the “new transport planning” process is very interesting for the reader and thus please provide additional insight into this topic.
Section 2. Materials and Methods: Please include a map with the Czech cities which were included in your research.
Section 2. Materials and Methods: Please include a Data Flow Diagram with all your methodological steps, so that the reader can have an overview of your work.
Page 5, line 236, “e.g. [45-51].”. Please enhance the text which is associated to the specific seven (7) references.
Page 6, lines 259-261: “In terms of basic sociodemographic characteristics, men prevailed in the sample of key stakeholders, which reflects the gender structure of the decision-making actors in cities in Czechia;”. Please provide some general statistics concerning Czechia as far as the above-mentioned statement is concerned.
Page 6, Table 2: Sociodemographic characteristics of respondents: My suggestion it to delete the specific Table since the number of the participants is rather small for having robust conclusions.
Page 7, 1.4. Data collection – questionnaire survey: Please include the questionnaire used in the questionnaire-based survey.
Page 7, 1.4. Data collection – questionnaire survey: Please include the equation for the sample size calculation together with the calculations.
Page 6, lines 252 - 254: You finally conducted 45 stakeholders out of 83 initially selected. Please explain within the text how the fact that 38 stakeholders did not participated in your survey affects your findings.
Page 11, “Graph 1: Main transport problems in relation to the city size”. Please note that the headings of graphs usually appear below the graphs. The same comment applies in the case of graph 2 (page 12).
Page 14, Table 5: Differences between cities with and without a SUMP using t-tests: Please change the term “accidents” to “road accidents” or “traffic accidents”.
Page 15, Section 4. Discussion and conclusions: My suggestion is to have two separate sections, one for the “Discussion” part and one for the “Conclusions” part. Please try to investigate whether your findings comply with the findings in other countries (and if yes, to what extent). In addition, please include the appropriate references in the section of “Discussion”.
Please include the limitations and constraints of your work in the sections of “Conclusions”.
Author Response
We thank you very much for your valuable comments.
We made a language check and shortened some parts of the text to make it more concise. We also reflected on the suggestions of the reviewers and added some more information in the paper on particular topics.
Our response is provided in the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for satisfactorily responded to most of my comments.
