As the City of Copenhagen has recently joined the ERTICO Partnership, ERTICO has interviewed its Traffic and Urban Life Department Manager, Steffen Rasmussen, to understand their main interests in this international ITS network:
The City of Copenhagen has recently joined the ERTICO partnership. What are the reasons for this decision?
Basically, we have joined the ERTICO partnership in order to utilise and contribute to its pool of ITS knowledge and because we support common standards in Europe. But the specific reason is that Copenhagen will be hosting the ITS World Congress in 2018.
What are the transport priorities of your city? How is ITS contributing to their achievement?
Copenhagen is known as the City of Cyclists. Green mobility that combines the best cycling conditions in the world with efficient and integrated public transport paves the way for green growth and quality of life in Copenhagen.
We want to become the world’s first CO2 neutral capital in 2025. The transport sector must contribute to achieving this goal, and the main purpose of our ITS programme is to do our bit to reduce CO2 emissions.
ITS contributes to a more efficient and environmentally friendly flow of traffic, including by making public transport more attractive and less polluting, as when buses negotiate with traffic signals in order to obtain extra green light when needed.
We will be using ITS to optimise signals in the largest corridors for cycles, cars and buses. These initiatives, which will be rolled out in 2016 and 2017, will reduce travel time and the number of stops – to the benefit of road-users and the environment.
From your point of view, what are the benefits of international public-private collaboration in the ITS field?
Through public-private collaboration it is possible to develop innovative solutions that will make life easier for road-users.
Copenhagen’s ITS programme is based on public-private innovation projects which have generated added value in the form of solutions that the City of Copenhagen could not have developed on its own.
By focusing on specific challenges and setting up teams of experts from 15 Danish and European companies and two knowledge institutions covering a wide range of areas, we succeeded in developing technical, creative and intelligent solutions.
Compass4D, an EU-backed project in seven European cities implemented in 2015, is another good example of public-private collaboration generating added value.
The City of Copenhagen is hosting the ITS World Congress in 2018. What does this mean for your city?
It will give us a fantastic opportunity to showcase a number of green solutions for the transport sector and to bring together all ITS expertise in Copenhagen.
We look forward to the exchange of knowledge and the important ITS decisions that will be made in Copenhagen. In particular, we expect that automation within the transport sector will be the subject of transport policy discussions in relation to legislation and international standards.
Planning of the event is already underway and we look forward to welcoming our guests in 2018.
