The latest C-ITS City Pool Smart Cooperative Mobility event, facilitated by ERTICO in the framework of the C-MobILE project, was held on 15 April and gathered 72 participants around the discussion ‘What Public Authorities have learned and are planning ahead’.
This interactive session included presentations from C-MobILE project partners ERTICO, City of Helmond, Barcelona City Council, City of Copenhagen and C-Roads Platform. Since 2015 the C-ITS City Pool acts as a central meeting point between transport authorities engaged in and benefiting from C-ITS deployment and other cities / regions interested in how C-ITS can improve urban and regional mobility with the aim of raising awareness and supporting deployment. Since March 2018 the C-ITS City Pool has been an integral part of the C-MobILE Stakeholder Forum, involving traffic managers, road authorities and operators, industries, fleet operators as well as everyday road users (such as professional taxi, bus or truck drivers, but also vulnerable road users such as cyclists and pedestrians) aiming at establishing functioning partnerships.
Giacomo Somma (ERTICO) opened the floor and reminded us about the need and ambition of establishing functioning partnerships between public and private stakeholders towards a smart, cooperative and sustainable urban mobility enabled by interoperable C-ITS solutions. Additionally, Tamara Goldsteen (Helmond Municipality), presented findings from cities’ consultations. On this basis, she draws the top service’s priorities to deploy in the next years such as Green light Speed Optimal Advisory ( GLOSA), Green priority, Road Hazard & Works Warning, but also multi-modal and parking information. She also added that “all cities experienced with C-ITS want to continue their work further and beyond a given project and are planning to deploy more services than those already have in place”.
Jordi Ortuño Ribe (Barcelona Municipality) presented the city experience and tangible results obtained from the cooperation with local Firefighters, which has demonstrated how C-ITS services such as the Emergency Vehicle Warning (EVW) can improve transport safety and efficiency for the emergency services operators, their intervention’s subjects, and road users in general with clear societal benefits also in terms of sustainability and pollution.
Jos Van Vlerken (Copenhagen Municipality) shared the learning and plans to further expand the use of data and C-ITS technology integrated into daily traffic management operations to improve and increase mobility services, especially for cycling, within and across cities in the region. C-ITS is also part of the 2025 City Climate Plan strategy to increase the share of bike trips to 50% by making cycling more convenient (e.g. allowing to reduce stops & travel time by 10%) and by providing new, advanced services and multi-modal travel information.
Pedro Barradas, from the C-Roads Platform, highlighted the need for harmonisation of technical, organisational and functional requirements for data by providing a common ground for future interoperable, seamless C-ITS services in Europe.
To conclude, Zeljko Jeftic, ERTICO, reminded us of the relevance of C-ITS in several EU strategies for safer, greener and more efficient mobility. Preliminary findings of the ERTICO City Moonshot initiative, a study covering 300 cities across the world, more than “90% of city representatives would like to know more about C-ITS”. C-ITS is recognised as a key enabler of interactive traffic management thanks to a better real-time and predictive understanding of the transport network, of traffic flows and the overall mobility environment. Thanks to a new approach to integrated transport with a user-centric perspective, C-ITS can support mobility as a service / on demand. However, this requires more awareness creation at various levels, from the local problem to the global challenges. As a society, we have to continue finding ways to address climate emergency and road fatalities.
Giacomo Somma closed the event hinting that we need to push forward Smart Cooperative Mobility solutions considering the concrete needs of the cities and their citizens delivering tangible benefits that enable multi- / inter-modal mobility and active modes of transport, while continuing to raise awareness about C-ITS work and findings, especially in terms of benefits, sustainability economic, societal and environmental. These aspects will be addressed in the final exploitation workshop of the C-MobILE project on the 20 May 2021, when a new portal for Smart Cooperative Mobility developed in cooperation with public and private mobility stakeholders will be presented.
