Cities and metropolitan areas are playing a key role in reaching strategic global policy objectives, including competitiveness, social cohesion and innovation leadership. Cities offer businesses (large and SMEs), industries and services a flourishing environment to help spur economic development. As the backbone of our metropolitan areas, public transport is an essential contributor to make cities better places to live in, to work in and to launch a new business in. Urban mobility should be a priority for local leaders in order to help cities achieve inclusive growth and climate goals.
This Policy Brief presents the many ways in which public transport is an essential instrument to create value, not only for individuals and public authorities, but also for businesses. It also presents certain benefits that could emerge from a strong collaboration between public transport actors and the business community, as well as concrete recommendations on how it could be articulated as part of a city’s strategy for sustainable development.
We need to increasingly shape public transport in a way that when metropolitan areas address challenges such as social inclusion, health, growth, employment, gender balance, to name but a few, mobility appears as an enabler.