Project overview
Pushing a parking management approach on the agendas to green mobility strategies in functional urban areas
Urban mobility planning has long been focused on cars. As a consequence, parking lots reduce public spaces for trees and plants in cities. The needs of cars are prioritised over the needs of people. To change this, the NXTLVL Parking project reviewed innovative parking policies and transferred them to central Europe. They designed alternative approaches to make mobility planning more sustainable and introduced new strategies and tools for urban parking management that are replicable elsewhere.
-
2,51m €
-
Project Budget
-
80%
-
of the Budget is funded by ERDF
-
8
-
Countries
-
10
-
Regions
-
11
-
Partners
-
1
-
Pilots
Duration
Start date
End date
Project progress
Project partnership
Project partners
Lead partner
Cracow University of Technology
Department of Rail Vehicles and Transport
Project partner
City Development Office
N/A
Department of Chief Architect
Ressort Raumentwicklung, Landschaft und Landesdenkmalamt Abteilung 28 - Natur, Landschaft und Raumentwicklung
N/A
Mobility office
Roadmap
The Challenge: Why NXTLVL Parking was needed
Urban areas across Central Europe face growing motorization, severe parking pressure, traffic congestion, and the loss of valuable public space. Traditional parking management often operates in isolation, disconnected from broader Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs). To solve these issues, the NXTLVL Parking project was launched to help municipalities shift from isolated parking enforcement to integrated, data-driven, and sustainable mobility management.
ParkPAD Audits
The cornerstone of the project methodology was the ParkPAD (Parking Policy Audit Tool) process. Partner cities (such as Rostock, Žilina, Ferencváros, and Olomouc) conducted comprehensive ParkPAD audits, bringing together multi-departmental working groups and key stakeholders. These audits evaluated existing parking governance, identified key policy gaps, and established a consensus-based foundation for city-specific mobility planning. To ensure long-term impact beyond partner municipalities, follower cities were integrated into the project framework, who completed the ParkPAD audits as well.
Pilot actions
Project partners jointly designed, monitored, and evaluated 14 pilot demonstrations testing both "push" (regulatory) and "pull" (incentive) mobility solutions across Central Europe. Key initiatives included real-time fire lane sensors and AI scanning vehicles in Rostock, digitalized resident parking and GIS bike mapping in Žilina, a "residential parking only" scheme alongside covered B&R bike storage in Ferencváros, and new bicycle racks at schools combined with interactive map-based citizen engagement in Olomouc.
Knowledge Sharing, webinars & capacity building
Partners held regular peer-to-peer review sessions, joint capacity-building workshops, and public webinars. A highlight of this exchange was two major Central European-level webinars organized specifically for decision-makers and legislators.
Final outputs & implementation-ready action plans
The project delivered implementation-ready Parking and Mobility Action Plans for all participating urban areas, developed through joint capacity building and ParkPAD audits. It established a series of validated solutions based on the evaluation of 14 transnational pilot demonstrations across partner cities. Finally, partners delivered a transnational legislative advice package to regional and national decision-makers to harmonize parking regulations and support sustainable urban space reallocation across Central Europe.
News
Events
Pilot actions
Outputs
Joint development of Parking and Mobility Action Plans in functional urban areas following a hierachy of implementation readiness (output O1.2)
Joint development of solutions being the Parking and Mobility Implementation Plans in functional urban areas integrating joint activities on transnational pilot action, co-creation elements and evaluation frameworks (output O2.1)
Joint transnational pilot action on testing parking and green mobility actions in Central Europe’s Functional Urban Areas using different pilot demonstrations
Joint creation of a strategy on advice to regional and national responsible entities for parking regulations and legislation exploiting the project’s lessons learnt (output O3.2)
Project videos
Project documents
Guideline “Implementation Planning for a ParkPAD driven Parking and Mobility Action Plan”
Brochures from the Park4SUMP project
Project images
NXTLVL Parking
The project lead partner is responsible for the content of this project website.