Several cities are already implementing Green Travel Plans. Here you’ll find local stories about collaborations, insights, and results from efforts to promote sustainable daily travel.
Thousands of employees in Lund are participating in a green travel plan. Collaboration and a shared commitment are driving the Green Travel Plans initiative within the CoAction Lund partnership platform, which currently includes around 30 organizations with 40,000 employees in the city.
When traffic congestion increases, it’s easy to assume that the solution must be new pavement. Linköping chose a different path. By adopting green travel plans as a long-term, flexible approach, the city has been able to direct its efforts where they are most effective and adapt them over time.
In Östersund, sustainable travel is linked to social sustainability and individual motivations through the use of behavioral design. Instead of waiting for new bike lanes or street renovations, they have developed a method to bring about change immediately.
Green travel plans focused on schools give children a safer, healthier, and more climate-smart daily life. In Linköping, children, parents, and school staff are working together to improve the traffic environment around schools. The benefits for the climate and health come as a bonus.
The summary of the “Green Travel Plans” approach presented here is the result of a collaboration in 2025 between Viable Cities, SKR (Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions), the City of Linköping, and a dozen Swedish municipalities as part of the Climate-Neutral Cities 2030 initiative, with the aim of facilitating, deepening knowledge of, and accelerating and broadening the implementation of the approach in the municipalities. The work was carried out in 2025 with funding from Vinnova as a feasibility study to prototype an accelerator designed to support the implementation, scaling, and dissemination of Green Travel Plans and other successful initiatives for climate-neutral and sustainable cities at the local level.
The City of Linköping, which has been working with Green Travel Plans since 2013, is a pioneer among municipalities and has inspired a number of other municipalities to launch similar initiatives, not least Lund and Östersund. Twelve cities at various stages of implementing Green Travel Plans have participated in the work and shared experiences and insights, concrete tools, methods, and documents with one another and with the project. These have been collected and compiled to inspire and guide other cities and their local stakeholders in their joint efforts to implement and further develop Green Travel Plans. Implementing green travel plans contributes to reducing climate emissions and a range of other positive effects, such as smoother daily travel, better accessibility, improved public health, inclusion, and gender equality. Evaluations of travel to areas with green travel plans show, among other things, reduced congestion and lower climate emissions over time. The travel plans have also created a clear forum for dialogue on sustainable transportation with employees, employers, and property owners.
To support the implementation, dissemination, and scaling of new working methods, knowledge resources such as guides, descriptions, and tools are needed. A key insight is that the value of these resources increases significantly when combined with opportunities to meet, discuss, and learn together with others who are working to implement similar working methods.
Viable Cities is a strategic innovation program with the mission of achieving climate-neutral cities by 2030, ensuring a good quality of life for all within the planet’s limits. The program is funded by the Swedish Energy Agency, Vinnova and Formas and coordinated by KTH.
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