Beyond the SUMP Label: Institutional Pathways and Documented Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning Across 431 European TEN-T Urban Nodes

Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) are central to European sustainable transportation governance, yet cross-national comparisons are complicated by differences in plan terminology, approval procedures and institutional scope. This single-researcher documentary study examined all 431 TEN-T urban nodes across 27 EU Member States at the 18 September 2026 cut-off. An initial audit classified 343 nodes as Eligible; an evidence-based counter-audit of 30 purposively selected initially Eligible records identified an approval-stage inconsistency in Ancona, yielding a final classification of 342 Eligible nodes (79.4%), 65 Under development (15.1%), 19 Provisional (4.4%) and five with No open plan located (1.2%). Among the 342 Eligible records, 198 (57.9%) were Explicit SUMPs and 144 (42.1%) were other institutional forms; 71 retained Moderate typology confidence. All 210 initially Eligible decisions had been retained during the original second pass, whereas 133 records had been promoted, indicating a potential upward verification bias. The underlying register also contained 29 unassigned source-evidence grades. Under an extreme scenario in which all 71 Moderate-confidence Eligible records are treated as Provisional, Eligible coverage falls to 271/431 (62.9%); this is not a validated confidence bound. No blinded independent recoding was conducted, so reproducibility across coders remains untested. The results provide a dated institutional classification and an auditable account of its uncertainties, not independent confirmation of Annex V conformity, plan implementation or sustainability outcomes.