NetZeroCities driving Europe’s transition to sustainable and resilient urban mobility
Many European cities are setting ambitious climate target. Yet some goals are more feasible than others, given the political, infrastructural, technological, and socio-economic constraints.
Transport plays a key role in decarbonising cities, especially public transport since it helps cities to cut emissions while improving accessibility and quality of life.
Still, changing how people travel is not simple. Car dependency is still predominant. Public transport does not serve every area equally, street redesigns or network improvements take time.
So how can cities drive change and adapt successful approaches? What strategies work best? And are there ways to finance such changes?
Even when climate goals can feel out of reach, NetZeroCities aims to ease the transition. Launched in 2021, the initiative supports cities in overcoming structural barriers as the managing platform for the EU’s “100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030 Mission” (the EU Cities Mission).
The Mission’s aim is twofold: to help 100 cities reach climate neutrality by 2030, and to make them innovation hubs so other European cities can follow by 2050.
Climate neutrality cannot happen without mobility changes
Urban mobility is a great contributor to city emissions, and transport is consistently identified as one of the toughest sectors to decarbonise. NetZeroCities’ analysis found that transport is the second-largest barrier faced by Mission Cities (after cross-sectoral barriers), with private transport and public transport identified as the biggest subsectors.
It is therefore no surprise that mobility features prominently in the one of the NetZeroCities programmes – the Pilot Cities Programme. Of the 68 Pilot City activities, more than half include a mobility component, often focused on strengthening public transport and accelerating a shift away from car dependency towards active modes and shared mobility.
But redesigning a transport system is complex because it involves many actors and moving parts – infrastructure, investment, governance, service design and behaviour change all have to align.
Two Pilot City examples, Kranj (Slovenia) and Lahti (Finland), illustrate different but complementary approaches.
Kranj, Slovenia: making public transport easier to choose through Mobility as a Service (MaaS)
In Kranj, commuting pressure is felt on the road network every day, with congestion reaching 20,000 vehicles per day on some entry roads. Traffic is also a major source of air pollution. Like many smaller cities, Kranj faces a familiar barrier: the public transport offer is limited, which pushes residents towards private cars.
The city aims to make public transport more accessible and attractive, in order to make citizens shift to more sustainable mobility habits. To support this, Kranj partnered with two other Slovenian Cities (Lubljana and Velenje) to implement the Pilot Activity “UP-SCALE-Urban Pioneers – Systemic Change Amid Livable Environments“.
As part of the pilot, the city has developed a cloud-native Mobility as a Service (MaaS) module within the Smart Kranj platform, providing multimodal navigation options and nudging users toward more sustainable transport choices.
The MaaS module supports inter-city routing across the national public transport network, and offers multimodal navigation that integrates walking, cycling, shared bikes, bus and cars.
Users can personalise routes based on CO₂ emissions, energy use or shortest time, and can also see environmental impact data showing CO₂ emissions and energy consumption for different options.
The pilot has strengthened the city’s data-driven transport planning capacity, and the solution is expected to influence travel behaviour by making sustainable choices clearer and easier to act on.
It supports emissions reduction by improving the accessibility and availability of information (including arrival predictions), and by monitoring and modelling traffic flows to better understand what is happening on the network.
The solution in Kranj shows that MaaS works best as part of a broader service ecosystem. Data integration, user-centric design, governance alignment and citizen engagement all need to move together.
Lahti, Finland: driving sustainable commuting practice
Lahti aims to be climate neutral by 2028, yet mobility remains a key challenge. That is why its Pilot Activity “Systemic change towards sustainable commuting in Lahti (SYCLA)” focused on emissions from daily commuting, one of the most persistent obstacles on its path to climate neutrality.
The pilot aimed to shift commuting habits towards walking, cycling and public transport through co-creation with local organisations. A defining element was collaboration with employers: Lahti developed and tested a Sustainable Mobility Agreement with local companies, focusing on joint actions to reduce commuting-related emissions. One employer highlighted in the pilot is Kempower.
The project began by appointing dedicated contact persons to support transparent communication and sustained collaboration. It then assessed commuting practices and mobility needs through surveys, interviews and on-site observations. Findings were validated with Kempower and shared with relevant city stakeholders, creating a data-driven foundation for coordinated action.
Based on that analysis, the pilot team developed a tailored set of recommendations combining workplace travel policy updates, infrastructure improvements and incentives for low-carbon commuting modes.
Examples included discounted public transport passes and city bike memberships, as well as secure bike storage and better shower facilities at the workplace.
These measures were integrated into Kempower’s operations with support from the city, emphasising flexibility and responsiveness to changing employee needs.
What stands out from this pilot is how the Sustainable Mobility Agreement was used: not as a static commitment, but as a practical partnership model, with defined roles and accountability structures, and the use of verified data to guide implementation.
It functioned as a tool for iterative learning and adaptation, which is often what is needed when behaviour change is the objective.
How cities benefit from NetZeroCities
These are only two mobility-related examples among many supported through NetZeroCities, but they highlight an important point: there is no single route to decarbonising urban mobility.
Kranj demonstrates how digital integration and better mobility information can support public transport uptake and behaviour change. Lahti shows how commuting patterns can be addressed through city–employer collaboration, workplace measures and incentives.
For approaches like these to scale, cities need more than pilots. They need coordination, governance capacity and, crucially, investment pathways that turn tested solutions into long-term delivery. This is why NetZeroCities is increasingly concentrating its effort on moving from planning to implementation, by strengthening the financing side.
But, over the past five years, NetZeroCities has supported cities through a set of complementary activities designed to advance systemic mobility transitions, including:
- Climate City Contracts (CCCs), helping cities structure their transition pathway and connect action plans to investment needs
- Pilot Cities Programme, supporting more than 104 cities across three cohorts, giving cities time, resources and expertise to run funded, locally designed pilot activities that test rapid decarbonisation approaches over a two-year period, alongside support on areas cities often lack capacity for, such as monitoring and learning, governance set-up, and financing/funding
- Twinning Learning Programme, a 20-month knowledge transfer and peer-learning exchange between Pilot Cities and Twin Cities
- Capacity-building and peer learning, through expert training, technical visits, discussion groups and practical exchanges between cities, with a strong focus on systemic approaches rather than isolated measures
- NetZeroCities Portal / Knowledge Platform, a centralised platform with an expanding set of tools and resources, designed so cities do not have to reinvent methods or hunt across scattered sources (e.g., Climate Transition Map, Systems Innovation Interactive Tool, Engagement Guidance Tools, and many more)
A key milestone has been the rollout of Climate City Contracts – a city’s roadmap to guide actions and investments, track progress over time, and identify strengths, gaps and opportunities on the way to climate neutrality.
CCCs combine three linked elements: Commitments, an Action Plan and an Investment Plan, developed through a co-creation process with local stakeholders and grounded in policies, data and long-term financial planning.
In practical terms, the CCC framework pushes cities to build 1) an action portfolio (baseline, gap analysis, pathways, KPIs, responsibilities), and 2) an investment plan that assesses capital needs and sets out how to mobilise public resources and attract private capital.
Once a CCC is submitted, it goes through a completeness and coherence check by NetZeroCities experts before being sent to the European Commission, helping reduce back-and-forth and speeding up the review process.
Then, cities that receive the EU Mission Label gain access to the Climate City Capital Hub (launched June 2024) which provides tailored financial advice (with EIB + EBRD) and connects cities with investors.
The progress is quite significant as, as of 15 October 2025, 103 out of the 112 Mission Cities had received the EU Mission Label, surpassing the Mission’s “100 cities” objective.
Green mobility as a step to climate-neutral cities
NetZeroCities is not only helping cities test innovative solutions, as it is also reducing friction in the transition process, closing gaps in time, coordination, financing and expertise so cities can deliver on their climate-neutrality goals.
Mobility is a critical part of the climate-neutrality journey, and public transport is central to making that journey fair and feasible. UITP is proud to support NetZeroCities through the UITP-coordinated UPPER project, helping to reach more cities and share practical resources across Europe.
