Transferring research on sustainable urban transport policy into practice

It is widely accepted that cities understand what action is needed to achieve greater sustainability in urban transport, but that there are several barriers to the pursuit of such actions. While research is able to suggest ways of overcoming these barriers, the process of transferring research results into practice is itself uncertain. This paper focuses on experience of such policy transfer and on ways of improving the process. The principles of policy transfer are presented, together with a summary of the requirements for effective policy transfer highlighted in case study cities in Europe and North America. The limits on policy transfer are illustrated based on experience in a five year UK research programme, DISTILLATE, which developed decision-support tools designed to help overcome the barriers to sustainable urban transport policy. The programme resulted in a set of 18 decision-support tools, and an overarching web-based tool designed to help local authorities identify the tools which were most appropriate to their needs. The paper considers in detail experience in the dissemination of five of the outputs produced. It compares that experience with the findings of research on the policy transfer process. Recommendations are drawn for further research, and for ways of transferring such research more effectively into practice.