Thursday, March 12th, 2026
On 10 December 2025, the Expert Group on Urban Mobility (EGUM) adopted a new report titled “Urban nodes: Cooperation between cities and stakeholders of their Functional Urban Area (FUA)”.
The report provides a comprehensive overview of how cities, regions, Member States and stakeholders are organising cooperation beyond administrative borders to meet the new requirements introduced by the revised TEN-T Regulation.
Urban nodes are recognised under the revised TEN-T Regulation as strategic hubs for both passenger and freight transport. More than 80% of transport activity occurs in and around these nodes, making them central to Europe’s climate, competitiveness and resilience objectives.
However, the report highlights a fundamental governance challenge: mobility flows rarely align with administrative boundaries. Commuting zones, logistics corridors and infrastructure networks extend well beyond city borders. As a result, effective mobility planning must operate at the scale of the Functional Urban Area (FUA).
The report confirms that FUAs provide a meaningful perimeter for mobility planning, particularly for Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs). However, FUAs often do not coincide with existing jurisdictions, raising issues of representation, legitimacy and implementation capacity.
Rather than redefining FUAs, the real challenge lies in managing them effectively in practice, ensuring coherent governance, coordination mechanisms and data collection across functional boundaries. FUAs are also dynamic: new infrastructure, changing commuting patterns and urban development continuously reshape them.
One of the report’s main conclusions is that there is no single model for cooperation. Governance arrangements differ significantly across Member States.
The report identifies several cooperation models currently in place:
Across these examples, a common finding emerges: cooperation works best when there is a recognised coordinating entity and strong political leadership.
Systematic data collection and monitoring remain major challenges, particularly for smaller municipalities. Some countries have developed innovative methodologies, such as Spain’s national big-data approach to defining FUAs or metropolitan mobility surveys in Barcelona.
Robust data governance is essential not only for planning but also to comply with new TEN-T reporting obligations on sustainability, safety and accessibility.
The 2023 revision of the TEN-T Regulation significantly strengthens the role of urban nodes. Key requirements include:
These obligations reinforce the need for governance structures capable of operating beyond city boundaries.
ALICE contributed to the EGUM subgroup and highlights the importance of integrating logistics into FUA-level planning. Urban nodes should strengthen logistics collaboration and embed circular economy principles, ensuring better coordination between mobility, urban planning and supply chains.
The report underlines that sustainable urban mobility must address both passenger and freight flows, supported by collaboration, consolidation and communication among stakeholders.
The report does not prescribe a single governance model. Instead, it reflects the diversity of European contexts and emphasises that success depends on:
As urban nodes take on new responsibilities under TEN-T, cooperation at the scale of Functional Urban Areas will be essential to ensure resilient, efficient and climate-aligned mobility systems across Europe.
Download the document here: d3820870-fb45-4378-8bf8-474611649f1d_en