European cities rarely experience a truly “normal” day when it comes to mobility. Daily commuter peaks, seasonal tourism surges, large cultural and sporting events, and unexpected disruptions constantly test the capacity and resilience of urban transport systems.
This constant stress-testing reveals a critical truth for cities: mobility is the backbone of tourism. When transport systems buckle under the weight of visitor flows, the very appeal of a destination fades, and the local quality of life deteriorates.
But conversely, robust, multimodal mobility networks turn tourism peaks into opportunities for economic vitality without compromising urban liveability. Therefore, urban mobility must play a central role in the EU’s future tourism initiative.
Rome. Turning tourism pressures into opportunities for sustainable urban mobility
In 2025 alone, Rome welcomed around 50 million visitors, including those attending the Catholic Jubilee, a major religious celebration that brought extraordinary flows of pilgrims to the city.
Such occasions create moments of intense ‘peak pressure’ for Rome’s mobility systems. Yet the city has increasingly treated them as opportunities to identify weaknesses in the transport network and accelerate long-term improvements.
“We made a choice when talking about the Jubilee,” explains Eugenio Patane, Deputy Mayor for Sustainable Mobility and Transport of Rome. “We decided that we could not manage Jubilee, but we would use it.”
Patane explains that the event acted as a true stress test for the city’s innovation and mobility systems, leaving behind three main legacies. The first is infrastructural: new transport investments such as two additional metro stations on Line C, the expansion of electric mobility with 465 electric buses and depot electrification, the creation of new cycling routes or the pedestrianisation of previously car-dominated spaces.
The second is an operational legacy: for the first time, a fully integrated coordination structure brought together policymakers, municipal administration, police, civil protection, and transport operators, enabling joint executive decisions directly on the ground. What began as an exceptional arrangement is now becoming a permanent model for managing the city.
The third legacy is cultural. Large-scale events raise expectations and push cities to aim higher, demonstrating that a cleaner, quieter, and more sustainable urban environment is achievable.
An old city embracing modern transformations
Rome is seeking to redistribute tourism more evenly across neighbourhoods and cultural routes, reducing pressure on the most crowded areas of the historic centre.
Municipal authorities have also introduced stricter regulations for tourist buses entering the historic centre, where access fees for limited-traffic zones have increased substantially over recent years, and environmental criteria now restrict access for older and more polluting vehicles. Buses powered by gas or electricity benefit from significant discounts, encouraging a gradual transition towards cleaner fleets.
Streets around the Colosseum and parts of Via dei Fori Imperiali have been progressively pedestrianised, while traffic-calming measures such as the introduction of 30 km/h zones aim to make the historic centre safer and more liveable.
At the same time, Rome is developing a 50-kilometre cycling ring designed to connect the historic centre with outer districts, forming the backbone of a broader strategy to expand cycling infrastructure across the metropolitan area.
These developments are part of a broader shift towards sustainable multimodality. Rome has become the Italian capital of shared mobility services, with a fleet of around 13,000 e-scooters and 5,000 e-bikes increasingly integrated into everyday transport.
The municipality has extended service areas to suburban neighbourhoods and introduced discounts for public transport cardholders using these services, helping transform micromobility from a leisure activity into a structural component of the urban mobility system.
Public transport has also undergone significant expansion and modernisation. In recent years, 1,057 new buses have entered service, including 411 electric vehicles, alongside hybrid and natural-gas models.
Rome is also investing in the passenger experience. More than 800 digital installations are being deployed across the city’s bus network, including smart shelters equipped with interactive touchscreens providing real-time information.
Below ground, the modernisation of the metro network continues alongside the preservation of the city’s archaeological heritage. Construction is continuing on the next station at Piazza Venezia, widely regarded as one of the most complex infrastructure projects in Europe due to the archaeological sensitivity of the site.
A shared challenge across European cities
The Roman experience reflects a broader pattern emerging across European cities: sustainable urban mobility is taking over.
In Stockholm, for example, active mobility has become a central pillar of urban transport policy. Cycling and walking are supported through sustained infrastructure investment and operational planning designed to ensure reliability even during winter conditions, commuter peaks or large events.
Lars Strömgren, Vice Mayor for Transport and Urban Environment of Stockholm, stresses that travel behaviour has changed significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic. With more people working from home, commuting patterns have become less predictable. “Transport systems were traditionally designed around repetitive flows,” he explains, “with large numbers of people travelling back and forth at the same time each day.” According to the Deputy Mayor, cities must therefore plan transport networks in a more flexible way, developing systems that are more balanced rather than simply oriented around peak-hour commuting.
This approach also informs the city’s strategy for promoting cycling and walking. The administration focuses on encouraging as many people as possible to cycle, supported by well-designed cycling routes and bypasses that also allow visitors to experience the city more easily by bike.
Brussels faces a different but equally demanding context, where frequent international meetings and large gatherings linked to European institutions regularly place additional pressure on the urban transport network.
“The answers we need to those events are the same as the answers we need for our visitors and the people living in Brussels. And it is in multi-modalities. It’s not taking it as a slogan. It’s not an application on your phone. It’s really a guideline for your policy choices,” says Elke Van den Brandt, Minister of Mobility, Public Works and Road Safety at Brussels Capital Region.
Over the past five years, the city has invested heavily in public transport, including new tram and bus lines. These investments are strengthening the network, and the Minister noted that people from different age groups and backgrounds continue to rely on it.
In the past, Brussels was not seen as a cycling city (something that often prompts amusement from observers from the Netherlands, she acknowledged), but now the city is changing that. The expansion of cycling infrastructure has already tripled bicycle use in Brussels, representing a major shift for the city.
This multimodal approach has also contributed to a reduction in car use. The Minister argued that decades of car-oriented policy have shown their limits: heavy reliance on cars leads to congestion, poorer road safety, air pollution, and increased stress. Alternatives such as public transport, cycling, and walking free up urban space that can be used for people to meet, walk, cycle, and spend time together, improving the quality of life in the city.
A central objective in Brussels is therefore to encourage drivers to move their cars off the street in order to free up public space. This remains one of the city’s biggest challenges. To address it, the government is working on pricing and regulation. In 2022, the cost of on-street parking was increased to encourage drivers to use off-street parking facilities instead.
For those reasons, Van den Brandt described multimodal mobility as a win-win strategy: it helps cities manage the pressures created by large events while also making everyday life better for residents. While the concept may sound straightforward, implementing it is often challenging. Each new cycle lane or bus lane requires political effort, budget negotiations, and public debate.
Athens, meanwhile, has experience hosting major events, such as the Olympic Games. Managing visitor flows has become an integral element of the city’s Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan and Climate City Contract, with tourism acting as a catalyst for longer-term mobility transformation.
“Tourism and major events can contribute to advancing sustainable urban mobility,” says Maro Evangelidou, Deputy Mayor of Urban Regeneration and Resilience of Athens, “and influence political priorities and help move mobility policies forward.”
In her view, they should not be seen only as a burden on cities, but also as an opportunity to shift mentalities and encourage more sustainable behaviour. However, a key challenge lies in the limited powers and resources of municipalities. Local governments represent only a small part of the overall decision-making system and have limited influence over broader issues such as regional transport and major infrastructure. Another challenge is to transform ad-hoc measures into long-term investments.
Behind each of these approaches lies a common lesson: effective mobility management during peak demand depends not only on infrastructure but also on governance.
What emerges from these experiences is that mobility stress is no longer an occasional disruption but a structural feature of urban life. Anticipating and managing these pressures requires sustained investment, supportive regulatory frameworks and stronger cooperation across levels of government. EU and national policies therefore have a key role to play in supporting cities to plan, invest in sustainable mobility and ensure that growing tourism flows remain compatible with urban liveability.
What cities expect from the EU Sustainable Tourism Strategy
EU policies should better recognise the role of cities in tourism governance. Stronger financial and legislative support is needed for sustainable urban mobility investments that help cities absorb visitor flows, including public transport capacity, active mobility infrastructure and urban access measures.
In parallel, the EU should continue its work on improving connectivity between cities, as proposed in the EU High-Speed Rail Plan, to help distribute tourism more evenly across Europe. By doing so, this will enable visitors to reach a wider range of cities and regions while reducing pressure on the most heavily visited urban centres.
As the European Commission prepares a new EU Sustainable Tourism Strategy expected in June, more than 20 local politicians gathered during the Eurocities Mobility Forum in Rome to discuss how mobility policies can help cities manage growing visitor flows while maintaining sustainable urban environments.
During a high-level political exchange on the Tourism Strategy and a dedicated plenary session on stress-tested cities, city representatives shared their experiences of managing periods when mobility systems are placed under exceptional pressure, whether due to tourism peaks, major international events, or seasonal fluctuations.
Local politicians participating in Eurocities high-level discussions emphasised that mobility and tourism are inseparable. Cities called on the upcoming EU Sustainable Tourism Strategy to recognise the role of urban mobility in managing visitor flows and protecting residents’ quality of life.
For Europe’s cities, the lesson is clear: when mobility systems are resilient, tourism can thrive without compromising the liveability that makes urban destinations attractive in the first place.
“Urban mobility is, ultimately, a pillar of European resilience,” says Patane. “When local transport systems struggle, the single market feels it.”
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These topics formed the discussion among city leaders examining how mobility systems can remain resilient when demand surges, whether during tourist seasons, major cultural events or unexpected disruptions.
The plenary session, bringing together representatives from Rome, Stockholm, Brussels and Athens, explored how cities can transform moments of pressure into opportunities for long-term mobility improvement.
The debate was part of the first day of the Eurocities Mobility Forum 2026, hosted by Rome on 18-20 March under the title ‘Heritage nodes, future flows: shaping mobility in timeless cities’.
