1 December 2011, Brussels, Belgium

ERTICO Forum on “ITS for Urban Mobility”

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Dear friends,

First of all I would like to thank all the speakers and participants for their excellent contributions to the success of this Forum “ITS for Urban Mobility”. This Forum is the starting point of an initiative of the ERTICO Partnership to support cities to identify appropriate ITS solutions for their urban mobility challenges and goals. Cities have the biggest challenges in the context of safe, clean and sustainable mobility. ITS might have the biggest potential to meet these challenges in an effective and cost-efficient way.

The ERTICO Partnership offers its support to cities. First we want to listen and learn. Second we want to provide our expertise and competence to advise. Third the cities make their decisions to achieve their goals. This initiative facilitates the cooperation between cities and ITS stakeholders to achieve a common goal: safer, cleaner and smarter mobility in cities integrating all modes of transport.

This report summarises the Forum’s presentations, all of which may be found on the i-Mobility Network website (www.i-mobilitynetwork.com), where you will also find the recording of the entire day’s events. You are also invited to particpate in the follow-up webinar, to take place on 12 January 2012 - again, you can register on the i-Mobility network website.

I hope you will enjoy reading this report. The ERTICO Partnership will continue its work with cities to support them in identifying the right ITS tools for their challenges and goals.

Hermann Meyer

CEO ERTICO – ITS Europe

Introduction

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Keynote address - Pawel Stelmaszczyk, Head of Unit, DG MOVE..............................................4

What do cities want? ITS solutions for cities

Steffen Rasmussen, Head of Traffic Design Department, City of Copenhagen.............................6

Pablo Isusi, Head of Mobility Division, Bilbao Council..........................................................7Gert Blom, Strategic Advisor Mobility, City of Helmond.........................................................8

What can ITS deliver? ITS solutions for cities

Josef Czako, Group Director, International Business Development, Kaspch TrafficCom................9Siebe Turksma, Product Manager, Research, Peek Traffic.......................................................10

Gino Franco, Innovation Manager, Mizar Automazione – Swarco Group...................................11

Richard Harris, Solution Delivery Director EMEA, Transport Solutions Group, ACS – A Xerox Company.....................................................................................................................12

What can help deployment?

Pierre Schmitz, First Engineer, Directorate General, Ministry of the Region Brussels-Capital, Administration of Infrastructure and Transport..................................................................13

Bernhard Engleder, Head of Municipal Department, Vienna City Administration.......................14

Paul Potters, Connekt.....................................................................................................15

What are existing success stories? Where was ITS successfully implemented?

Andreas Mehlhorn, Head of Consulting, Mobility Division, Siemens.......................................16

Paul van Koningsbruggen, Programme Manager, Technolution...............................................17

Conclusion

Rasmus Lindholm, ERTICO Head of Partnership Services and Communications..........................18

Contents

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Mr Stelmaszczyk began by emphasising

the importance of the Commission being on the

same wavelength as other ITS stakeholders as they “must converge at some point and start moving towards delivering on the key objective”. For the Commission, Mr Stelmaszczyk explained that they must start delivering on the goal of drafting and delivering specifications in “key areas” of the ITS Directive and

delivering on the ITS Action Plan, something he envisioned needing ERTICO’s support with to ensure adequate input from ITS stakeholders.

Mr Stelmaszczyk continued by stating that the European Commission takes urban ITS very seriously citing the fact that urban mobility is at the heart of EU transport policy. Indeed, 60% of the EU population live in urban areas. He then explained that a third of deaths from road traffic accidents occur in urban areas. Further, two thirds of all road traffic accidents in the EU happen in urban areas. Therefore, he underlined the importance the European

Commission puts on addressing road safety in EU cities.

He pointed out, however, that the Commission takes

the subsidiarity principal very seriously in respect to urban ITS because “obviously local authorities know what works and what doesn’t in terms of ITS deployment”. Therefore, he made it clear the

Commission would be relying on local

authorities to help implement urban ITS

solutions.

In terms of the ITS happenings inside the European Commission, Mr Stelmaszczyk noted that they have established an urban ITS action expert group which is focussed on delivering items from the ITS Action Plan as well as concentrating on delivering on

Pawel Stelmaszczyk Keynote Address

Pawel Stelmaszczyk, Head of Unit, DG MOVE, opened with a keynote address outlining the European Commission’s position on urban ITS and citing some of the work already being done by the Commission in the field.

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Local authorities know what works and what doesn’t in terms of ITS

deployment

key areas of the ITS directive. He remarked that, “obviously” the Commission wants to promote ITS in urban situations and as a result, this is one of

the key tasks of the ITS expert group.

The group was established as an informal expert group with a two year mandate. It was described as taking a “multimodal” approach in its discussions which Mr Stelmaszczyk stated were very broad in nature. Indeed, the group was said to be covering regions and transport interfaces to see where improvements can be made.

As far as outcomes go, Mr Stelmaszczyk explained that the ITS expert group needs to focus on accelerated deployment of key applications in urban areas such as real time travel information, smart ticketing, traffic management as well as urban logistics whilst being mindful of the fact that what works in one city might not work in another. Mr Stelmaszczyk, therefore, stressed the importance of local and regional adaptations in ITS deployment.

The expert group is expected to have three specific outcomes. The first of these is to identify and help exchange best practices and key applications in urban ITS. Secondly, the expert group is expected to help elaborate guidelines for the deployment of urban ITS with a specific focus on interoperability. Finally, Mr Stelmaszczyk stated that the expert group is expected to identify the need for further standardisation at EU level.

However, Mr Stelmaszczyk warned that as there is a risk of restricting innovation if a standard is set too early, the process takes a certain amount of time. However, he also warned that waiting too long to decide on a standard is just as dangerous as it can create a situation where multiple standards have already been deployed. In support of this warning he cited the lack of standardisation in mobile telephony in the United States when mobile phones were still an emerging technology.

The outcomes of the expert group will, according to Mr Stelmaszczyk, contribute to the new European ITS Committee and the European ITS Advisory Group, both of which were established based on the ITS Directive.

He continued that the Commission wants to

use the output of the group to develop specifications on real-time traffic and travel information.

Mr Stelmaszczyk concluded by

reminding attendees about the European

Mobility Challenge which he described as entering its decisive phase after having been launched by Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas. Indeed, the winners of the challenge are set to be announced in January 2012.

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He began by stressing the importance of understanding

“urban mobility” in the context of a city authority. Asking whether this was a grandparent crossing the city to pick up a grandchild from school, a sporting event, leisure time within the city and even whether it were vertical, horizontal or both, Mr Rasmussen stated that all these aspects must be considered when deciding what can be done with ITS.

Mr Rasmussen then outlined some of the priorities a city authority has, such as green economic growth, healthy and safe urban living and happy citizens. Cities can help by providing a political framework to work towards these priorities. Indeed, Mr Rasmussen cited the city of Copenhagen’s goal of being the first carbon neutral capital city in the world by 2025; other goals include: promoting walking, making the city a centre for world climate policy, making Copenhagen the best city for cycling and promoting more and better use of the city’s public spaces.

In terms of how ITS can help Copenhagen achieve these goals, it is important that public authorities develop a market for ITS solutions, push for innovation and engage with both public and private stakeholders both inside and outside the ITS community.

In terms of transport solutions to achieving the city’s goal of being carbon neutral Mr Rasmussen highlighted green urban mobility initiatives such as improved urban mobility, e-mobility and congestion zones. Indeed,

he continued by turning the spotlight to concrete developments in these arenas. The city has recently concluded a tender for traffic management in the city that includes the option of deploying a bus priority system, ecodriving infrastructure for lorries and special traffic management for big events. He explained that a cornerstone of the tender was that traffic management be based on an open communication protocol to allow the provision of free and accurate data to transport service providers.

Mr Rasmussen also called attention to Copenhagen’s plans for a congestion charge, on track to be implemented in 2012. The system would include the automatic detection and recognition of cars entering the congestion zone, allowing the city authority to charge all vehicles seamlessly.

Mr Rasmussen closed his presentation by highlighting areas where ITS can further help the city. Citing the goal of making Copenhagen the best cycling city in the world, he identified adaptive traffic systems as a key technology that can help realise the goal.

Further, Mr Rasmussen used the example of the World Cycling Championship held in Copenhagen. During the event, the busiest road in the city, normally carrying around 60,000 vehicles/day, was closed for three business days. The event was a success with 80% of the city’s inhabitants calling for it to host more such events in the future.

Following the keynote address, the first session of the Forum began - “What do cities want? ITS solutions for cities”. First to present was Steffen Rasmussen,

Head of Traffic Design Department, City of Copenhagen. His presentation gave an overview of the mobility needs of a European city, highlighting examples where ITS can help as well as outlining the kinds of goals city authorities have.

What do cities want? ITS solutions for cities

Cities can help by providing the political framework...

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Mr Isusi opened his presentation noting that

the Basque region is faced with an ageing population, something that is important to keep in mind when developing urban transport solutions. He continued that, of course Bilbao wants to support sustainable development and that ITS is seen as a key part of its urban mobility management toolbox.

In terms of the business environment, Mr Isusi explained that the financial crisis has had a profound impact on city budgets, especially for smaller cities. As a result, cities have less money to invest in projects and are forced to be very selective.

One saving grace however has been the fast pace of IT development over the last few years. IT costs have come down and more and more citizens have a constant internet connection in the form of a smartphone. This has made it cheaper and easier for cities to integrate systems and data as well as share that data with service providers and citizens.

In addition to their budgetary restrictions, Mr Isusi highlighted the fact that small and medium sized cities have less traffic on their roads which has led to them having a lack of expertise in the realm of ITS. This lack of expertise, coupled with a lack of ITS standards and interoperability has increased the cost of deployment of ITS systems.

Reaching the specifics of the Bilbao case,

Mr Isusi gave a brief overview of the now completed “first ITS plan” in the city. The results of the plan were a new traffic management system, a bus priority system and ability to make traffic information and data available online. He continued by highlighting the areas that Bilbao hopes to build upon in its second ITS plan such as cycling, onstreet and offstreet parking and a greater focus on the city bus system.

Feeding into the city’s plans for the future, Mr Isusi introduced some of the EU funded ITS projects that Bilbao has been a part of, such as FREILOT, which has been piloting a reservation system for loading/docking spaces in the city. In addition, the city has been part of a project to provide real-time bus travel information to elderly citizens as well as participating in Co-Cities which is concerned with implementing the In-Time platform.

In closing, Mr Isusi looked to one last future plan for the city of Bilbao, the development of an open data system to provide city information to service providers.

The second presentation under the title “What do cities want? ITS solutions for cities” was given by Pablo Isusi, Head of Mobility

Division, Bilbao Council. The example of Bilbao provided a window into the workings of a medium sized city in regards to ITS. Indeed, Bilbao offered a stark contrast to the situation in larger cities.

we are very focussed

on what we want...

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What do cities want? They

want mobility solutions...

“What do cities want? They want mobility solutions” quipped

Mr Jeftic, opening Mr Blom’s presentation with the “last” slide. Mr Jeftic then provided some background on Helmond, introducing it as a medium sized city with a firm belief that ITS will help them resolve their mobility problems.

He gave a brief overview of FREILOT, introducing it as a 3 year project with 4 million euros of EU funding, piloting four different services with 22 partners. The services being piloted cover areas such as traffic control, vehicle, drivers and fleet operators. The overall aim of the project is to provide a 25% reduction in the fuel

consumption of urban freight.

Specifically, traffic control covers technology for energy efficiency

optimised intersections,

vehicle technologies, adaptive acceleration and

speed limiting. The driver technologies include eco driving support and the technologies for fleet operators cover the ability to book delivery spaces in cities.

Mr Jeftic explained that Helmond is piloting energy efficiency optimised intersections. With an abundance of fleet operators in the area the city has found that the optimised intersections have greatly enhanced mobility in the city.

Giving an overview of the reasons the city of

Helmond chose to participate in FREILOT, Mr Jeftic explained that, in addition to the city authority’s support of more “utopian” ideas and their prior experience in projects such as CVIS and SafeSpot which has given the city a state of the art traffic management system, the city decided to participate in the pilot as it was seen as supporting the city’s mobility & air quality policy.

In general, the issue is not so much about technology and policy, but standards, business models, general acceptance and evidence, before arriving at real deployment and thus real mobility solutions. Through FREILOT however, the FREILOT consortium will be able to develop business models, engage in standard setting and measure the benefits the technology provided, not just for FREILOT, but for ITS in general. As a result of the FREILOT, the consortium will have developed business as well as organisational models, so being ready for implementation after the pilot phase.

Helmond sees FREILOT as more than just another project due to its strong focus on business models. On the other hand, it is just another project: if, for one reason or another, FREILOT services prove not to be the solution, other ITS related services will be developed and deployed. The city also found that the project highlighted the importance of local cooperation, eg with local fleet operators, but also the city council - Brussels and European projects are sometimes very far away from day-to-day politics on a local level. Most importantly, it was said that the key to success was a cooperative mindset rather than the technology itself.

Filling in for Gert Blom, Strategic Advisor Mobility, City of Helmond, who was struck by illness and unable to attend, Zeljko Jefitc, Senior Project Manager, ERTICO, gave Mr Blom’s presentation on the city of Helmond’s experience with the FREILOT project.

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What can ITS deliver? ITS solutions for cities

Mr Czako introduced it as a “broad topic” by pointing out that it’s important to ask how deployment of ITS can be sped up. Framing it as a question of convincing people of the merits of ITS he first introduced the three main problems faced by cities as he sees them.

Top of his list of challenges for urban traffic was the environment. Indeed, Mr Czako cited World Health Organisation figures showing that 1.2 million people a year die as a result of air pollution. In response to this, he gave examples of how ITS can reduce emissions through smoothing traffic, adapting driver behaviour and promoting the use of public transport through making planning multimodal journeys a simple process.

The second challenge faced by cities, as Mr Czako sees them, was congestion. He described it as “eating time” from people’s lives during their daily commute as well as producing CO2. In fact, he revealed figures stating that 1.8% of the EU’s GDP is “eaten” by congestion, amounting to 233 billion euros every year. However, he was quick to point out that ITS could make a significant impact in this arena through the use of steering mechanisms that make better use of a city’s infrastructure, the application of pricing strategies to incentivise different routes or to change departure times and the provision of real time traffic and travel information to help travellers make more informed mobility choices.

The third challenge highlighted by Mr Czako was road safety. In addition to ITS measures

to prevent accidents and promote road safety such as optimised infrastructure at intersections and better road rule enforcement technology, the role of driver education was highlighted as an excellent means of making the road a safer place.

ITS then, Mr Czako outlined, could help in all the areas where cities have problems. Indeed, even in times of constrained city and government budgets that might limit the potential to invest in new schemes, Mr Czako pointed out that ITS could represent a significant revenue stream for governments in areas such as road pricing and rule enforcement that can promote the “user pays principle”.

Indeed, he outlined the success stories of congestion – or as he termed it “anti-congestion” charging schemes showing that they had the potential to not only generate revenue but reduce congestion by up to 30% (in London) and reduce carbon emissions by up to 16% (in London).

Mr Czako concluded by calling on cities to see traffic as an opportunity. Telling them to face the challenge it presents and to decide on policy, define the scheme and choose the right ITS solution for their needs.

Described by Hermann Meyer as “the other side of the coin” to the first session on what cities want, the second session, entitled “What can ITS deliver? ITS solutions for cities”, opened with a presentation from Josef Czako, Group Director, International Business Development, Kaspch TrafficCom. His presentation focussed on the “next generation of pricing models for managing demand and for reducing air emissions through the use of ITS”.

Congestion is a serious probelm, eating time and

money

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Mr Turksma explained that traffic management involves

and always has involved a series of tradeoffs. Indeed, he continued that there has never been a “perfect” solution to traffic management. Each system available has always come with its own set of tradeoffs. However, he reminded attendees that policy tools to handle the tradeoffs do exist and are able to mitigate the worst effects of the tradeoffs.

Current traffic management systems are, according to Mr Turksma, less than able to cope with new policy decisions. He explained that policy changes faster and more frequently than traffic management systems can. Therefore, he explained, traffic management need to be more adaptable to changes.

As an example, Mr Turksma highlighted a particularly complex intersection in the Netherlands. Historically, he said, intersections have been expensive to design, expensive to maintain and policy changes have been hard to realise. Indeed, currently, to make changes to existing intersections, city authorities have had to endure a lengthy and expensive process and contract traffic engineers to do the planning work.

After giving an overview of how far traffic

management systems have come, explaining how the first systems were too rigid and that current systems are much better at adapting to policy changes, Mr Turksma went on to say that the next generation of traffic management solutions would include policy based adaptive control allowing for low cost implementation, automatic adaptation to traffic demand and easy to change.

Further, the systems would mean that not only would drivers be able to receive traffic information in their car but interact with traffic managers in real time to allow for the most up to date and reliable information and traffic management.

Siebe Turksma, Product Manager, Research, Peek Traffic then took the opportunity to “zoom in on traffic management systems” giving an overview of the challenges faced by city authorities and traffic engineers in designing and implementing traffic management systems.

traffic management systems must

cope with changing mobility

policies

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In addition to the economic impact, Mr Franco was eager to highlight the impact transport has on the environment. With 16% of emissions coming from road traffic, he was keen to show that reducing emissions in the sector would go a long way to meeting the EU 2020 goals on emissions.

Turning to the concept of smart cities, Franco stated that a smart city must also be a sustainable city. With respect to transport, he saw this as meaning the ability to adapt to new mobility requirements such as the changing composition of traffic (more electric vehicles etc...) as well as providing multimodal travel information.

In addition, Franco explained that while ITS solutions should work in a predictable way, they must also be shock resistant, meaning they need to be able to deal with unexpected events on the transport network.

The great strength of ITS however, according to Mr Franco, is the ability to make systems interact. Indeed, looking at cloud computing, Mr Franco sees a great opportunity to implement a deeper integration of ITS systems and services. This integration would, according to Mr Franco, allow coherent information at multimodal transport intersection points. Further, integrated payment solutions will increase the ease of use for travellers. This integration, it is hoped, will make it significantly easier for travellers to make informed transport choices rather than simply opting to use their private vehicle because

they see it as the easiest option, despite its relative inefficiency in many situations.

ITS integration will further benefit users through the provision of personalised responses to their needs. Mr Franco explained that the provision of this information could reduce travel time by 20% and CO2 emissions by 11%. This tailored information will also allow the provision of data to suit extremely specific user roles such as information for professional drivers, tourists and infrequent drivers.

Closing his presentation, Mr Franco turned to the example of the Florence region of Italy where they have integrated their ITS services into one overall monitoring network. This network allows for the provision of dynamic forecasts of the entire ITS network for city managers and traffic monitors while also allowing data to be packaged in a user friendly manner and shared with the public online.

Gino Franco, Innovation Manager, Mizar Automazione, opened his presentation by underscoring the importance of urban mobility. Citing the fact that the world population now numbers over 7 billion, with 51% of people living in urban areas, a number that is set to rise to over 66% by 2040, he continued by reminding attendees of the impact mobility has on the economy. With the increase in the urban population forecast, that impact will only become greater.

a smart city must also be a sustainable

city

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Mr Harris warned that the EU’s financial recovery was still very fragile, pointing out that going forward, there would be even more restraints on key resources. Indeed, he explained that the transport sector is faced with a number of challenges, both economic and environmental. Key among them is growing the transport sector while still

allowing the EU to reduce carbon emissions by

60% by 2050.

An increase in transport accessibility leads to an increase in economic activity.

Mr Harris went further

by citing the fact that a 10% increase

in accessibility engenders a 2% increase in economic activity. As a result, the transport sector is a prime example of an investment that pays back dividends.

From a policy perspective, Mr Harris insisted that ITS is not about the technology used but its ability to support policy or business model outcomes. Therefore, it is very important to capture the benefits from ITS projects so that they can be learned from and built upon, warning that if this is not done then the benefits of initiatives are easily lost. An increase in network capacity that is not captured will simply be lost to more traffic when it could have been turned into more bus and cycle lanes for example.

Mr Harris explained that the traditional view of ITS from city authorities is that it

is a huge cost to collect data for the purpose of informing, monitoring and controlling traffic and travel information on the transport network. However, Mr Harris stated that it was important to understand the potential of the underlying IT solutions which provide the opportunity for much more cost effective overall solutions. Something, Mr Harris says, that when reduced to data and transactions, is a much less complex undertaking.

He continued by calling for actors in the ITS sector to not concentrate on pushing ITS but on pushing solutions as the only way he sees ITS succeeding is if its presented as a solution to mobility problems rather than as an interesting gimmick.

Mr Harris ended his presentation by pleading with suppliers and operators to stop installing legacy systems and start installing more flexible solutions to ensure that upgrades are easier and more cost effective in the future. A cost and undertaking most would find prohibitive. In the same vein, he said that traffic information centres were, in his opinion, less important than the traffic information. As a result he called for more cooperation across jurisdictions, with authorities sharing services, capitalising on the flexibility of cloud computing to to maximise efficiency, reduce costs and better provide information to travellers.

Richard Harris, Solution Delivery Director EMEA, Transport Solutions Group, ACS – A Xerox Company opened his presentation by briefly outlining the economic impact of the transport sector, which he noted contributes 5% of the EU’s GDP.

ITS is really simple - it makes

things safer, surer, smoother

and smarter

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Indeed, Mr Schmitz’s presentation focussed on explaining how to

approach ITS deployment when dealing with city and national administrations. All too often he explained, companies approach cities with a new ITS product that

they claim the city needs without addressing the specific

use case of each city. As a result, he said, it is important for actors in the ITS community to listen to the needs of administrations and tailor their sales pitches to present solutions to problems rather than present products in and of themselves.

To illustrate his point, Mr Schmitz gave attendees a window into the minds of city politicians. Unveiling the results of a speed limit survey it was clear that a large portion of those surveyed supported lowering the city speed limit to 20km/h. These were, he explained, people already living in the city. Those opposing the lowering of the speed limit and even in favour of the raising it to 50km/h were the commuters who live outside the city. The problem however, lies with the fact that, as Mr Schmitz pointed out, commuters are not the voters of the city politicians.

In addition, while short journeys make up the bulk of trips in a city, longer trips are seen as more important by decision makers, leading to a massive allocation of resources to a relatively small portion of journeys made each year.

Mr Schmitz then turned to look at the EU’s

ITS directive, citing how important information related provisions are in the text. Drawing on this, he pleaded for better communication between administrations. Indeed, he cited arguments between differing administrations with their own services over how best to integrate them as an argument for the establishment of an independent third party to come in and make suggestions or rulings on how best to achieve service integration.

Turning to the ERTICO’s thematic paper on urban mobility, the background document to the Forum, Mr Schmitz agreed that ITS deployment must always be in line with the urban planning vision of a city. He then gave four steps to ITS deployment, namely: Why ITS?, Which ITS, How to deploy and Do it!

He continued that it is useful for cities to receive advice on the quality of ITS systems and services before making tender and procurement choices. Indeed, Mr Schmitz highlighted this as one of the main problems faced by planners today, as it is hard to explain the value of ITS solutions to politicians; there is often little data that can be used to convince politicians who are rarely engineers and almost certainly not ITS experts.

Schmitz concluded that ITS providers need to actively listen to cities, understand their real needs and approach them with an array of tailored solutions rather than a simple line of products. He also underscored the importance of ERTICO as a bridge between public and private actors in ITS.

Opening the session titled “What can help deployment”, Pierre Schmitz, First Engineer, Directorate General, Ministry of the Region Brussels-Capital, Administration of Infrastructure and Transport, opened his presentation by saying that city governments have an idyllic view of city life and they want to see that view turn to reality, not just in picturesque parts of the city such as Brussels’ Grand Place, but everywhere.

What can help deployment?

Consider ITS as a tool

and not as the (only) solution

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AnachB was born from the need to reduce CO2

emissions in line with the EU’s emissions targets. Specifically, Vienna looked forward to the 80% reduction required by 2050 rather than the 20% called for by 2020.

Mr Engleder explained that an important area for ITS is public transport. Indeed, Vienna, he continued, has very modern public transport infrastructure and so, as a result, can really only further develop its capacity by deploying ITS. Due to its “excellent” public transport infrastructure, he underlined the importance of informing travellers of the public transport option and making it easier for them to choose to use it.

Vienna’s attempt to increase the share of travel undertaken on public transport is part of a wider goal to reduce the share

of private car travel in the city to 25% of the overall transport mix. The city administration hopes to accomplish this by primarily promoting walking and cycling with a smaller increase in the percentage of public transport.

Vienna, like many European cities, has a very large commuter population. As Mr Engleder put it, many city dwellers in Vienna dream of living in a nice house in the countryside outside the city. As a result of this upward mobility, the traffic on the main roads into the city is very busy during peak hours. Mr Engleder stated that the traditional response to problems such as this has been to build new roads or increase existing road capacity. However, he was of the opinion that the future solution to this problem should be intermodality.

Continuing his overview of AnachB he explained that it combines traffic

messages, real time traffic information, floating car data from taxis, public

transport information and traffic model data into one complete transport information interface. The important outcome of AnachB, he stated, was that it not simply be used to avoid traffic for car journeys, but that it be used for intermodal travel information.

Mr Engleder closed by informing attendees that AnachB has been

online for 2 years and is also available for smartphones.

Bernhard Engleder, Head of Municipal Department, Vienna City Administration used his presentation to introduce the Vienna region’s AnackB platform. AnachB is a traffic telematics service available online at AnachB.at

The solution is inter-modality

Comparing maps of the cities in 1950, 1980 and 2010 he commented: “Everything is urban now especially in the Netherlands”. The lean and green programme adopted began with community support for companies in order to help them improve their profitability while reducing their CO2 emissions by 20 percent over five years.

He reported that the front runners in the programme (20 percent of the firms involved) will have reduced their CO2 emissions by the target figure by 2012. “People are proud because it is not only about technology it is about building a community it is about organisation. People are proud to be part of this community and to have the lean and green label on their trucks on a day by day basis.”

The

general framework includes citizens, shops, shippers and transport organisations which combine within the scheme in order to receive special privileges.

In terms of outcomes, Mr Potters explained that longer trailers are now used for shipments to the outskirts and trucks are safe, green and quiet running on natural gas with low cab seating arrangements and wide vision facilities. As a result of these enhancements, priority is given to specific loading slots. Because those in the scheme have quiet trucks, night distribution is allowed as well as extra slots during the day. Trucks get priority on intersections and at traffic lights and are allowed to use bus lanes. They have access to HUB and priority loading zones.

The scheme’s ITS tools allow tracking and tracing for freight operators as well as in truck speed and route advice with information about road works and events.

The scheme has produced €40 million for the local community through payments made by freight operators. “The community concept has to be profit and green CO2 reduction. Now local communities are becoming members of ITS projects” declared Potters.

In his conclusion, Mr Potters reported that the project has attracted widespread

attention with interest from Italy, Spain, Sweden and Belgium.

Whole communities becoming part of an ITS solution to traffic management and CO2 reduction were the subject of Paul Potters’ Connekt presentation. Speaking on the legal issues of sharing public-private data, essential for urban ITS implementation, he outlined the success story of Rotterdam.

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Everywhere is urban

now!

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Addressing “Intelligent metropolitan solutions – making cities work” he pointed out that the same problems do not exist in China or the Middle East. In Europe there is a need to

integrate management of both the public and the private sectors.

In Europe planning is a sequential process with political decision makers passing decisions down to planners and in turn

to architects and then engineers.

“We need to have integrated management so that public and private sectors can be better managed and we have to address openly how this can be done. We need to capitalise on the lessons learnt from studies over the last five or ten years and to take account of the fact that the speed of development is a little bit slow,” Mr Mehlhorn said.

From a global point of view a number of things are triggering mobility issues. More people are living in urban areas in addition to demographic change. People are getting older and young people have a different attitude and would rather sell their car than their iPod, Mr Mehlhorn explained.

He continued by saying that the topic, when it comes to transport, is “green”, but it also is about competitiveness, especially in China and the Middle East. It is, therefore, important

to look at ITS and ask how it can improve competitiveness. How can ITS make a city competitive and at the same time improve its quality of life and its CO2 footprint?

Further, Mr Mehlhorn highlighted the importance of looking at hubs. He stated that there are huge problems in developing countries with transport links between ports and the interior. In cities it is important to look at such issues as city centre railway terminals and how people travel on from there. The issues are not only technical but regulatory.

Mr Mehlhorn concluded by calling for ITS to be seen as part of other structures including homes where cars are charged. Today, it is not about technology he opined, saying that ITS works and what is needed is a switch in the debate from discussing what ITS can do to ITS solutions. Solutions that generate revenue streams such as parking so that money can be

reinvested in transport projects are vital.

Mr Mehlhorn underlined the importance of i-Mobility as

a trigger for ITS. “You have to know where your car is, how to charge it and we have to see ITS in terms of the Internet”, he said. Industry needs to

makes bridges between suppliers and end users

and deal with issues such as tendering and compliance.

Andreas Mehlhorn, Head of Consulting, Mobility Division, Siemens, explained to attendees that focussing on how to simplify and integrate Europe’s complicated traffic management infrastructures as well as managing their integration to maximise the benefits of ITS is crucial.

Most discussions we have about ITS are about how to make cities competitive

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The city of Rotterdam, he explained, is a European

success story and the question now is how can it be fine tuned? “It is all there but

now we come to the question of how we can

enhance it with ITS,” he said.

Mr van Koningsbruggen’s project started with the instruction to address citizens’ complaints. The first step, he said, is to get control over everything. In Rotterdam they started with the traffic controllers on the ground because they were already in place. The next step for planners is to introduce technical control but everything must be integrated with the people on the ground, he warned, or the benefits would not be felt.

Looking at traffic management control centres, Mr van Koningsbruggen first explained the importance of guiding traffic onto roads where it can be handled most efficiently. Therefore, it is, he said, vital to have systems in place that allow traffic managers to adjust and fine tune traffic controls. In Rotterdam they already had city car controllers on the ground. However, Mr van Koningsbruggen explained that now the entire traffic management system is shifting to control centres. Indeed he continued, “It is not necessary to have just one you can have centres in different places so long as they are integrated. The important step is to upgrade from local to network,” echoing the statements of many of the day’s presenters.

After the issue of traffic control centres, Mr van Koningsbruggen turned to the issue of regional policy and planning. He looked at whether the region in question had a common idea on traffic control. Once a common traffic policy is achieved he explained, it becomes possible to bring in traffic demand management and in-video. He said that South Rotterdam is a prime example of traffic management and that there has been a traffic reduction of around 9% on the roads in the region.

On the subject of electrification of mobility he told the conference that “You have to start with today’s reality then you can build up. There is a legacy of basic ideas that provide the basis for the next step and the next jump forward.”

In his presentation, “A case study of the city of Rotterdam; how the delicate balance between policy, organisation, technology, road capacity and public order can lead to successful traffic management”, Paul van Koningsbruggen, Programme Manager, Technolution, argued that enormous investment lies behind progress in traffic management. The key, therefore, as he sees it, is to build upon what cities have in place today.

It’s not deploying ITS, it’s

enhancing ITS...

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Rasmus Lindholm, ERTICO Head of Partnership Services and Communications, wrapped up the day’s discussions with a summary of the discussions and a plan for follow-up.

The full summary can be viewed and downloaded from the i-Mobility Network website. The most salient points are:

» The EU welcomes closer cooperation with the ERTICO Partnership

» From cooperative technologies to mobility solutions…

» Citizens should be in focus, not the technology

» Realising and taking into account local differences

» Politically, ITS deployment is a challenge – how do we convince politicians that ITS is a necessity?

» Technology is good but more interesting is what can it do?

» The new world is highly connected – we are all connected, we need to figure out how this could be used for ITS

» Policy and organisational issues needs to be more in focus

» ITS industry needs to actively listen to the needs of the cities

» Data exchanges between private, public and different public authorities

» There are a lot of applications/services available today but integration will be key in the future

» ERTICO & ITS nationals play a role in bringing cities and industry together

Mr Lindholm invited all attendees to the forthcoming follow-up webinar on “ITS for Urban Mobility” on 12 January 2012 (register on the i-Mobility Network website). ERTICO will also hold a workshop in March in order to define a concrete action plan to drive forward the deployment of ITS in urban mobility.

Conclusion

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Notes

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