In Poland, Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans are increasingly recognised as an important instrument for cities and functional urban areas. For several years, Polish cities have been developing documents corresponding to urban mobility plans, particularly regarding their integrated character, social participation, and the prioritisation of transport modes alternative to the private car. Over time, the SUMP concept has moved from local planning practice and pilot activities towards a more visible position in the national urban and transport policy context.

Currently, the main urban centres in Poland have already adopted Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), often at different levels of governance and planning. This means that such documents are being prepared both for entire metropolitan areas, such as the Lublin Metropolitan Area, the Warsaw Metropolis, the Functional Area of the Kraków Metropolis, the Poznań Metropolis, the Szczecin Metropolitan Area, the Gdańsk–Gdynia–Sopot Metropolitan Area, Olsztyn Metropolitan Area and the Łódź Metropolitan Area, as well as for functional areas, individual cities.For many years in Poland, the prevailing trend was to develop SUMPs primarily for individual cities. Over time, however, as knowledge, institutional capacity, and planning experience expanded, there was a gradual shift towards broader plans covering not only the cities themselves but also their immediate surroundings and wider functional areas. This evolution reflected a growing awareness that daily travel patterns, commuting flows, and the movement of services and other socio-economic activities extend well beyond the administrative boundaries of individual cities. As a result, mobility planning has increasingly been undertaken at a scale that more accurately captures real spatial and transport relationships.

Plans developed at the metropolitan level make it possible to shape mobility policy in Poland in ways that reflect actual population flows and everyday travel behaviour. In the case of Poland’s 12 main metropolitan areas, home to more than 40% of the country’s population, a significant share of trips neither begins nor ends within the core city, but instead originates in or is destined for neighbouring municipalities. A metropolitan perspective, therefore, allows these interdependencies to be understood more fully and managed more effectively. This is precisely why a supra-local perspective is essential for the rational planning of public transport, cycling infrastructure, road networks, and policies to reduce car dependency.

A metropolitan-area SUMP and a functional-area SUMP are methodologically very similar, however, they apply to territories that are defined, named, and sometimes delimited differently. A metropolis is usually a larger, more tightly integrated urban system, characterised by intensive spatial, economic, and transport linkages. By contrast, a functional area may be either metropolitan or non-metropolitan, for example, when it forms around a medium-sized city. In practice, this means that although the planning tools remain similar, their spatial scope and scale of impact may differ significantly.

Although Polish SUMPs do not fundamentally stand out in terms of the methodology they use, the objectives they set, or the types of measures they propose, certain distinctive features can nevertheless be identified that give them a specific profile compared with the experience of other European countries.

First, the development of SUMPs in Poland is a relatively recent phenomenon. Its development has been driven largely by European Union policy and institutional support projects, rather than by a long-established domestic tradition of mobility planning that would have emerged organically within the national planning culture. This means that the implementation of SUMPs in Poland is taking place largely under conditions of accelerated learning, adaptation of European standards, and the simultaneous building of institutional capacity alongside the preparation of the plans themselves.

Second, SUMPs in Poland have an exceptionally strong supra-municipal dimension. National policy and ministerial support clearly emphasise that a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan should cover the entire functional urban area, not only the core municipality. In practice, this means moving beyond thinking about mobility solely within the administrative boundaries of a single city and placing greater emphasis on actual transport, social, and economic linkages. This is also reflected in the structure of the documents collected in the Ministry of Infrastructure\’s official repository: of the 51 assessed SUMPs, the vast majority cover functional urban areas, metropolitan areas, agglomerations, sub-regions, and other functional territorial arrangements rather than individual cities.

Third, Poland stands out for having a relatively centralised and formalised institutional framework for SUMP implementation. The Ministry of Infrastructure maintains a publicly accessible repository of assessed plans that is regularly updated, and the information it contains is transmitted to the institutions managing programmes under the 2021–2027 financial perspective. As a result, a SUMP does not function merely as a planning instrument left to local authorities, but as part of a broader system of coordination, monitoring, and quality assessment. Poland has therefore developed a national ecosystem supporting the preparation and implementation of SUMPs, ranging from awareness-raising, promotion, and advisory activities, through ministerial coordination, to formal quality assessment and the maintenance of a public repository of plans. This system includes, among other things, pilot activities launched in 2019, the TSI project, the position of the SUMP plenipotentiary, the Competence Centre, as well as adopted quality-management principles implemented through a plan quality assessment system involving a team of evaluators from CUPT. This degree of institutionalisation is one of the most distinctive features of the Polish model of SUMP implementation.

Fourth, in Poland, the SUMP is very closely linked to the logic of cohesion policy and to access to external funding sources. In practice, this means that the plan is not merely a strategic programming document, but also serves an important enabling function in relation to applications for funding urban mobility investments. The Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy indicates that the SUMP requirement for such investments is considered fulfilled when the plan covers the appropriate functional urban area, complies with the European Commission communication and TEN-T requirements, and has been formally adopted. Consequently, under Polish conditions, the SUMP performs strategic, coordinating, and financial roles simultaneously.

Fifth, Recent years have seen the development of numerous SUMPs for the functional areas of cities. For obvious reasons, in such documents — covering areas composed of several to several dozen municipalities — issues related to pedestrian mobility and local spatial planning receive less emphasis. The main focus is on integrating high-capacity public transport networks (primarily rail), intermunicipal cycling routes, and individual and public transport systems (e.g., through park-and-ride hubs).

As a result, some cities decide to prepare an additional “city-level” SUMP aimed at more effectively addressing issues such as pedestrian mobility, public health, urban greenery, road safety near schools and kindergartens, and related topics.