Quality Management in Mobility Management: A Scheme for Supporting Sustainable Transportation in Cities

ABSTRACT

Mobility management (MM) has been among Europe's prevailing approaches for promoting and achieving sustainable transportation in urban areas, with considerable work undertaken by researchers and practitioners in this area during the past two decades. However, development of MM policies and measures in European cities does not follow an organized and consistent approach for planning, designing, applying, and evaluating a comprehensive MM-system. In that context, the objective of this article is to propose a scheme, based on quality management (QM) principles, that would aid cities in systematically developing and deploying MM-plans and MM–measures and therefore in successfully supporting sustainability in their transportation system. The developed Quality Management Scheme for Mobility Management (QMSMM) is an integrated process of four major components, encompassing policy setting, planning, implementing, and monitoring and evaluating; these components are structured in a feedback loop and supported by a set of quality criteria per component. The structure, components, and elements of the QMSMM are presented in detail, along with supporting procedures for assessing a city's adaptation and compatibility with the scheme. Also, insights on a QMSMM demonstration to the MM-program of the city of Kortrijk, Belgium, are offered.

Key Words:

• assessment
• demand management
• Europe
• mobility management
• quality management
• scheme

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is part of the European Union integrated research project MAX – Successful Travel Awareness Campaigns and Mobility Management Strategies, funded by the 6th Framework Program (Theme: Sustainable Development). The complete QMSMM document along with its respective checklists was published as CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) 16030. The authors would also like to thanks the editor and the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.