An increasing number of European cities is engaged in the design and implementation of demand management strategies based upon the concept of "controlled access", which entails the more or less gradual interdiction of selected urban areas to traffic. Access restrictionschemes (ARS) vary a great deal, depending on the chosen exclusion criteria. Popular examples include closure of inner city areas and other sensitive zones to less clean and energy efficient vehicles or to freight vehicles above a certain weight, to private vehicles owned by non-residents in the restricted area, or to motorized vehicles altogether. In line and within the spirit of the Urban Action Plan, recommendations primarily concentrate on actions that the EU could undertake in order to make the most of the good practices developed in those EU cities that have already accrued a meaningful experience in the design, implementation and evaluation of schemes. These notably include (i) the development of a harmonised guidance on ARS good practice that would support cities without prescribing standardized solutions (ii) the establishment and maintenance of a single-window information resource on all ARS aspects, (iii) the funding of large ARS demonstrators.
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