On 4 November the Mayor of Verona, Flavio Tosi, welcomed the European road safety and efficiency project Compass4D to the city of Verona during a press conference organised by the Comune di Verona with the support of SWARCO Mizar and Telecom Italia.
In his welcome speech, the Mayor expressed his satisfaction of having Compass4D project in Verona. Mr Tosi pointed out “the importance and the peculiarity of the project in which Verona takes part, together with other 6 European cities, in order to increase road safety and public transport efficiency, and also to reduce the level of the urban traffic congestion. A great value for the city that, using innovative navigation systems for an intelligent transport, wants to improve not only the quality of our driving but in particular the road safety of all citizens”. The Mayor Tosi then recalled that “the city of Verona has been deeply involved in the development of advanced solutions the whole community can really benefit from. These solutions operate in the field of safety, mobility and in general in all the services for the citizens”. The Mayor has thanked the partners SWARCO Mizar and Telecom Italia for the important collaboration with the Verona Municipality in carrying out the project.
The political message of the Mayor was reiterated by Lorenzo Fontana, Member of the European Parliament, who stressed the importance of political support at national and European level in the harmonised deployment of cooperative services across the EU. According to the MEP Fontana, smart and efficient means of transport have a big impact on the everyday life of citizens and the local economy but they need adequate support from local governments and public authorities.
Pierpaolo Tona, Compass4D coordinator and project manager at ERTICO highlighted the key role of Compass4D at European level: “We are working on an excellence in Europe, merging the interests of public and private stakeholders working on the deployment of a better pan-European transport system. We intend to put intelligent transport systems in the hands of all citizens and the general public”.
Compass4D brings over 300.000 Euros of EU funding to the city of Verona to deploy three services: Red Light Violation Warning, Road Hazard Warning, and Energy Efficiency Intersection. In Verona, one of the most advanced cities in Italy in terms of ITS cooperative systems, vehicles will be gradually equipped with in-vehicle units which will communicate with roadside units and will also be usable in the other six pilot cities.
Vito Mauro, Member of the Supervisory Board of SWARCO Group, said: “Connected vehicles are now a reality: they talk to the infrastructure, exchanging important real-time data for traffic efficiency and safety. SWARCO believes in, and is investing a great deal in the market for cooperative systems. We have been working for years together with car makers on this; particularly important are the results achieved through the partnership with Audi, which are demonstrated live today, here in Verona. Compass4D project will give a significant push towards the deployment of this new traffic control systems generation in Europe.”
In addition to these technologies, for the first time in Europe, the pilot site will test the use of the LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology, launched by Telecom Italia (another important partner of the project) in May 2013. The LTE offers a data transmission with a download speed up to 100Mbit per second and an upload speed up to 50Mbit per second, allowing the broadcast of high definition contents.
“Telecom Italia – Sandro Dionisi, Director of Telecom Italia Lab, said – has been involved for years in research activity to develop sustainable mobility solutions and to deploy the pan-European eCall service (eCall), which represent innovative solutions of Intelligent Transport System. Today, thanks to the increased availability of TIM mobile ultrabroadband and LTE, with its low latency, we can offer data services to support a more effective smart mobility and the Verona pilot of the project Compass4D is a practical example of this”.
The press conference was followed by an international workshop on the current status and imminent trends of intelligent transport systems and a live demonstration of the services on equipped cars moving in Verona city centre.
In addition to Verona, Compass4D will equip with cooperative ITS services the cities of Bordeaux, Copenhagen, Helmond, Newcastle, Thessaloniki, and Vigo.
