The Annual POLIS Conference 2024: Strengthening Governance for Sustainable Mobility in Regions
The Annual POLIS Conference is Europe’s leading event on sustainable urban mobility, providing an opportunity for cities and regions to showcase their transport achievements to a large audience of mobility experts, practitioners, and decision-makers from both the public and private sectors. The Regional development agency of Ljubljana urban region actively participated in the event, co-hosted by POLIS, Baden-Württemberg, the City of Karlsruhe, and Messe Karlsruhe. Held on November 27-28 the conference once again reaffirmed its status as Europe’s leading forum for advancing innovative and sustainable urban transport solutions.
After a record-breaking edition in 2023, the POLIS Team and this year’s hosts and POLIS members Baden-Württemberg and Karlsruhe were glad to welcome 1,000 participants for another exceptional Conference. Winfried Hermann, Minister of Transport of Baden-Württemberg addressed the audience, saying “We live in times of global pushback and growing distrust in our international organisations and partnerships, but today we are together, 1000 people united, fighting for sustainable mobility. You give me hope for our common future.” Hermann continued, “My political vision is quite clear: transforming our region into a pioneer state for sustainable mobility.” Baden-Württemberg is definitely on its way to achieving this vision, not only by being the first region to ever host a POLIS Conference, but also by fostering the shift to sustainable mobility at regional, urban, and rural levels.
The plenary’s keynote speech by Philipp Rode, Executive Director of LSE Cities, underscored the urgency of rethinking urban mobility systems to become truly multimodal and thus enhance sustainability and accessibility. “’Fix that mix’ implies that our current transport systems are failing us”, Rode remarked, pointing to issues like empty trucks, underused cars, and excessive travel distances harming urban environments. He emphasised that “private cars dominate at the expense of walkability and urban vibrancy,” urging a shift to sustainable modes like walking and cycling to shorten travel distances and prioritise accessibility over movement.
All panellists agreed that governance, funding, and scalable innovation are essential to realizing a truly multimodal future. Achieving a multimodal future requires a user-centred approach, balancing the strengths of all transport modes. The lesson is clear: no single mode can do it alone, public-private collaboration and ecosystem thinking are essential, and innovation and partnerships should help to fill the gaps that mass transit as the backbone cannot meet.
The focus on mobility governance in the Ljubljana urban region was featured in round table discussion Extending regional connectivity through multilevel governance. Participating alongside with Cecilia Braun (Interregional Alliance for the Rhine-Alpine Corridor EGTC), Eugenia Kolb (Ministry of Transport Baden-Württemberg), Otar Nemsadze (Rupprecht Consult and Lara-Britt Zomer from Province of South-Holland), Klemen Gostič from the Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region highlighted the current status of the mobility governance within the Ljubljana urban region, presenting all the common mobility projects and stressed the importance of the newly established Regional Mobility Centre of Ljubljana urban region for further collaboration with the local and national level in aligning mobility policies on the regional scale.
The participation of the Ljubljana Urban Region at POLIS 2024 underscored several key takeaways:
- Collaborative Governance: Multilevel governance involving cities, regions, and national authorities is essential to create cohesive and scalable mobility solutions.
- Regional Integration: Enhancing regional connectivity requires aligning policies and projects across jurisdictional boundaries (local to regional and regional to national), ensuring that urban and rural needs are equally addressed.
- Sustainable Innovation: Embracing innovation and fostering public-private partnerships are crucial for addressing gaps in traditional mass transit systems and achieving multimodal integration.
The second and final day of the Annual POLIS Conference 2024 brought together hundreds of mobility experts, policymakers, and practitioners to celebrate sustainable urban mobility achievements and address the most pressing transport challenges.
Following the last round of Parallel Sessions, the Closing Plenary session Charting or Changing the Course provided an impactful conclusion to the conference, featuring high-level discussions on the urgency of maintaining and accelerating the transition to sustainable urban mobility amidst complex global challenges.
As the POLIS President Eva Oosters closed the event, anticipation began building for the next Annual POLIS Conference in 2025, which will be hosted in the City of Utrecht on November 26 -27, 2025.
