EUROPEANMOBILITYWEEK Award - The top 10 European Cities

On 15th March 2016 the European Commission announced the list of top ten candidates for the EUROPEANMOBILITYWEEK Award 2015 with this year’s theme “Choose. Change. Combine.”. It was a special year, as European Commission received 53 applications from 19 countries. However those, who have made the greatest effort in promoting the more sustainable means of transport, such as public transport, cycling, walking and the combination of them, and encouraging citizens to change their habits and ways of transport, were shortlisted as finalists.

Urban Transport Roadmaps Tool is coming!

On 13 April 2016 the Urban Transport Roadmaps tool was launched at an event in Bremen (Germany).

The web-based tool, which is supported by the European Commission's DG MOVE, is designed to explore transport scenarios that are practical, feasible and implementable. By using the tool, political and technical decision-makers can find a suitable mix of measures to realise the goals of their Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs).

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is coming to Europe

Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies signed Letter of Intent regarding the feasibility study to link cities of Bratislava, Vienna and Budapest by supersonic Hyperloop system last week.

The Hyperloop is a conceptual transportation system that would send passenger-filled pods through a semi-vacuum tube at speeds of 1200 kilometers per hour which would allow passengers to travel between these three cities in less than 20 minutes. 

How sustainable mobility contributes to the win of the European Green Capital Award?

“Ljubljana - winner of the Official European Green Capital Award - will from today act as ambassador for sustainable urban development, sharing its local, best practices and encouraging other cities across Europe to become greener, healthier and more sustainable” – source European Commission’s Facebook page

This post was the motivation for raising various queries, such as “What is the European Green Capital Award?”, “Which are the criteria for winning it?” and “Which actions and changes, regarding sustainable mobility mainly, had to be done by Ljubljana’s authorities in order to win the award?”

GreenYourMove: New & Innovative Multimodal Eco-friendly Transport Planner

Visit www.greenyourmove.org and learn more!

EU Travel: an optimodal platform

The potential societal, environmental and economic benefits of multimodal travel information, planning and ticketing services are huge. Societal benefits arise from supporting passenger rights to information, including those with special needs. Environmental benefits result from itineraries optimised for environmental criteria and increased use of public transport and other modes, such as cycling and walking. Economic benefits include new business opportunities for service providers in a growing market.

EuTravel delivers an Ecosystem promoting and supporting Optimodal travel which is populated with tools that tap into existing mainstream IT travel reservation systems and sources of travel data.

HSL provides sustainable mobility through open data, open APIs and open journey planner

Concerning that most of the carbon emissions of transport and most of the energy consumption caused by road transport, Helsinki Region Transport (HSL) considered that the reduction of car driving and the increase of use of public transport, walking, cycling and car sharing are urgent needs. In this direction, HSL has planned the development of the Helsinki Region Transport System Plan (HLJ).

HSL is a joint local authority, consists of seven member municipalities – Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen, Kerava, Kirkkonummi and Sipoo – which started its operations in 2010. HSL made the use of public transport attractive to commuters, as 345 million journeys are accomplished according to its services.

Telematics Systems: The case of Larissa

LARISSA URBAN KTEL S.A., the transportation provider of the city of Larissa, is on the side of passengers for more than 50 years, contributing to the improvement of urban transportations and the substantial prosperity of the city. Since 1939, when the first effort was made with only two buses of 19 seats, until today, the corporation has made remarkable actions in order to provide the best services. The extensions of lines and the creation of new one, the installation of wireless communication systems in buses, the placement of ticket issuing machines at key points, the function of a touristic train, the increase and the renovation of bus fleet considering the needs of people with disabilities and the successful contribution to the transportations of the Olympic Family to the Athens 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games are some of its main significant achievements.

Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) – The EU funds pilot projects of 1,3M€

The Platform for the Deployment of C-ITS in the European Union (C-ITS Platform) was launched by the Commission in July 2014. The platform provides an operational instrument for dialogue, exchange of technical knowledge and cooperation, among the Commission, public stakeholders from Member States and local/regional authorities, and private stakeholders such as vehicle manufacturers, service providers, road operators, telecomm companies, Tier 1 suppliers, etc. with the aim to build a shared vision on issues hampering coordinated deployment of C-ITS across the EU and supporting their actual deployment.

Plan your journey fast and easy

Daily trips, business travels, and even more vacation journeys are now can be planned easier, faster and cheaper through journey planners (JP). Therefore, leave your car and download a JP application!

First of all, let us clarify our terminology. A journey planner is a specialised electronic search engine used to find the best journey between two points using some means of transport. JP applications are web and smartphone applications which compute the most cost – effective route involving several nodes by minimizing one or more than one criteria, such as distance, time, travel cost and environmental impact.

Explaining road transport emissions - A non-technical guide

  EMISIA, GYM consortium's member, has co-authored a non-technical guide “explaining road transport emissions”, recently published by the European Environment Agency. The report provides a summary of the current knowledge on vehicle emissions in Europe, it also explains how emissions are monitored and the common technologies used to limit them.

Road transport is an important source of both greenhouse gases and air pollutants. Despite improvements in vehicle efficiencies over past decades, today the sector is responsible for almost one fifth of Europe's greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions from vehicles also lead to high concentrations of air pollutants above EU standards in many of Europe's cities. This report provides a summary of the current knowledge on vehicle emissions in Europe. It also explains how emissions are monitored and the common technologies used to limit them.

This is why GYM matters

Some 80,000 deaths are prevented each year thanks to the introduction of EU policies and new technologies to reduce air pollution. This is the finding of a new study led by the UK’s University of Leeds that shows a 35% reduction of fine particles in the atmosphere between 1970 and 2010. 

In the study – the first to look into the effectiveness of specific EU policies to reduce air pollution across Europe – researchers used a computer model to compare the current amount of air pollution simulated across Europe to a scenario in which no air quality legislation or new emissions technologies had been introduced since 1970.

23rd ITS World Congress - Enhancing Liveable Cities and Communities

Intelligent Transport Systems Australia (ITS Australia) on behalf of ITS Asia Pacific, ITS America and ERTICO will host the 23rd World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems 2016 in Melbourne - Australia (Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre) on October 10th to 14th, 2016.

SHIFT²RAIL Joint Undertaking Initiative

What is SHIFT²RAIL Joint Undertaking Initiative?

SHIFT²RAIL will be the first European rail initiative to seek focused research and innovation (R&I) and market-driven solutions by accelerating the integration of new and advanced technologies into innovative rail product solutions.  SHIFT²RAIL will promote the competitiveness of the European Rail Industry and will meet the changing EU transport needs. Through the R&I carried out within this Horizon2020 initiative, the necessary technology will be created to complete the Single European Railway Area (SERA).

Intelligent Transport Systems: The National Strategy of Greece, 2015-2025

   The Greek Ministry of Economy, Infrastructure, Marine & Tourism published in 2015 the National Strategy of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) of Greece for the period 2015-2025. The Strategy was generated in compliance to the National Action Plan (ITS Action Plan 2012) and the Presidential Decree 50/2012, both of which harmonized Greece with the EU Directive 2010/40/EU. The National Strategy focuses on the development of a modern network of combined transportations with undisturbed flow and real time information for the whole country.

Plan your trip within Adriatic macro region

TISAR faced the lack of a multimodal travel planning system in the Adriatic area. Such topic is very relevant in the Adriatic macro-region since mobility difficulties in the use of public transport are increased by the lack of information available in the area and the great lack of integration and interaction between the systems.​

Environmental Impact of GYM project

GYM platform is expected to encourage car drivers to shift to public transport by promoting co-modal and environmentally efficient transport patterns and reducing CO2 emissions. For every individual who stops using his/her private automobile, the amount of emissions that can be saved is on average 205g CO2 eq. / pkm.

On the other hand, every person shifting towards the public transport does not necessarily increase the amount of CO2 eq. produced by the public transport sector, since the vehicle would anyway be operating on the same route with or without the additional traveller (assuming that the weight of additional passenger does not increase significant the total weight of the vehicle).

Not just move, but green your move!

As journey planning platforms are gaining more and more ground in the field of individuals’ transportations, more and more countries in Europe are trying to develop their own journey planning platforms.

Some of these platforms are country level, such as the “IDOS” in Czechs Republic and the “9292” in The Netherlands, but there is also the Irish “Hit the road”, which helps commuters plan their route exclusively in the city of Dublin. Other journey planners cover all means of transport, such as the “Rutebok.no” in Norway, which includes rail, public transport, ferry, air, cycling and walking in its options, and other cover only daily use means of transport such as the Austrian “Scotty”, which includes rail, public transport and walking in its options. Additionally, there are journey planners which provide fare information such as the “SBB Online Fahrplan” in Switzerland and the “NMBS – SNCB” in Belgium. All these options are really helpful, but they are not enough!

GYM objectives

The objectives of GYM are:

• To develop tools that will accurately measure the emissions of public vehicle circulating in the EU public transport networks under consideration.
• To develop tools that will provide the environmentally friendliest journey from any point of the network under consideration (at least Czech, Dutch and Greek) to another by using public transport and optimize passengers’ logistics.