The C-MobILE project has deployed cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) and services in collaboration with public and private stakeholders, including end-users to deal with mobility challenges across Europe. On 20 May the project consortium unveiled the project main results and findings in an online event with 180 attendees. This is a summary of the main discussions.
Alex Vallejo (Applus IDIADA), C-MobILE Project Coordinator, opened the Final Event by giving an insight of the major objectives of this 4-year project uniting 37 partners to accelerate large-scale deployment of C-ITS services in 8 European cities & regions.
During the first part of the event, the final results of the C-MobILE project were presented in terms of C-ITS services impact evaluation, cost-benefit analysis (CBA), and project key exploitable results (KERs), respectively presented by Michael Michael Böhm (DLR), Areti Kotsi (CERTH-HIT) and Klaas Rozema (Dynniq).
Klaas Rozema, C-MobILE Exploitation Manager, reminded that the aim of C-MobILE was to achieve large-scale deployment not only by achieving international interoperability of technical solutions (showcased with a short demonstration video during the event), but also thanks to suitable business cases and incentives. Here, the work focused on KERs, using a holistic method developed by the Technical University of Eindhoven. Ten business models radars explored the possible benefits for all the relevant actors using different C-ITS services (such as Green Priority, GLOSA, etc.) and the project’s commercial partners were engaged to decide on the group of KERs most suitable for them in creating a roadmap for large-scale deployment. He concluded that additional steps are needed for further deployment of C-ITS to the market.
This first part was concluded by a panel discussion on the topic “From pre-deployment to market: the future is now!”. The discussion focused on the future of C-ITS and the next steps to achieve large-scale, harmonised market roll-out in Europe, moderated by Klaas Rozema with the panellists Ray King (City of Newcastle), Tamara Goldsteen (City of Helmond), Olivier Lenz (FIA), André Perpey (NeoGLS), Laura Coconea (Swarco), and Mats Rosenquist (Volvo Group).
Giacomo Somma (ERTICO) presented a newly developed Cooperative Urban Mobility Portal (CO-UMP.eu). He highlighted that since the project start, cooperative and connected technologies have faced a constant evolution within the ITS community, the European Commission, the market (with C-ITS services made available on commercial vehicles as of 2019) as well as the wider society (with services addressing vulnerable road users and multi-modal transport). The Stakeholder Forum established by C-MobILE involved public authorities, market players from various industry sectors, and road users. Along the original 8 C-MobILE Deployment Sites, additional 33 external cities were connected to the project enabling matchmaking and exchange of new insights. This new Portal represents the project’s inheritance and is a step beyond C-ITS towards cooperative & connected mobility services made available everywhere to everyone. The objective of the Portal is to connect now all actors to the future mobility, making urban mobility more efficient, safer and greener, thanks to the existing and future interoperable technologies, organisational & planning processes and business cases. The benefits include sharing information, data, tools, knowledge and real life practical experiences as well as benefits of connecting with partners and joining this growing community.
Zeljko Jeftic (ERTICO) presented the C-MobILE strategic agenda, which is setting out a set of recommendation for C-ITS, in relation to a number of market changing initiatives including the European Green Deal, establishment of the Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) field and multimodal mobility. As compared to the past integrated transport is no longer vehicle centric, but user (citizen) centric; C-ITS has evolved in the same direction and it is still a key enabling technology. The strategic agenda aims to shed light among mobility and ITS stakeholders about the current status and key factors that will influence the widespread deployment of cooperative & connected technologies for multimodal mobility. The C-MobILE Strategic Agenda hence provides recommendations on key priorities for more results-driven development & deployment in the future.
These presentations introduced the second panel discussion on “ITS for sustainable, green and digital mobility”. Moderated by Zeljko Jeftic, the panellists Geert van der Linden (European Commission – DG MOVE), Jan Romijnders (Technolution), Georgia Aifandopoulou (CERTH-HIT), and Jos Van Vlerken (City of Copenhagen) discussed the challenges and the future perspectives of C-ITS as key enabler mainly for CCAM and digitally-enabled interactive & predictive traffic management (TM 2.0), but also as a support tool for Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning (SUMP 2.0) and Mobility as a Service (MaaS).
Geert van der Linden pointed that the biggest barrier to moving forward is unclarity on the legal side, but the biggest challenge is defining the business case. Benefits of the C-ITS are clear and existing, but are largely societal and C-ITS only works if employed in large numbers, therefore everybody needs to be on board. He noted that the changes will take time, and all the transport users must get involved. C-ITS will not make policy choices for us. The infrastructure needs to be adapted and right incentives provided in order for the cooperative & connected technology solutions to make mobility more efficient, greener and safer.
He also stressed the large scale C-ITS deployment is needed also as enabler for CCAM and the unlock of the higher levels of automation in the future. A new partnership is being launched dedicated to CCAM and C-ITS is part of it, as it integrates any vehicle with the infrastructure and the traffic management centres while enabling viable solutions to shared, public and active mobility, an alternative for private vehicle ownership.
The event was concluded by the presentation from Abel Carbonell (IDIADA), C-MobILE Steering Committee member, on main project highlights C-MobILE delivered and the challenges faced. Alex Vallejo closed the Final Event with the presentation “Europe’s current & future Challenges” highlighting the interoperability as the main aspect for the large-scale market uptake and the need to increase and engage public-private partnerships to make deployments possible. Improved data access, well-maintained, quality data and higher accuracy are essential for C-ITS services to function, along with increasing and promoting user awareness. Effort is needed in dissemination of results, C-ITS and informing all the users how these can benefit their lives.
Finally, Giacomo Somma invited all the attendees to connect to the new Cooperative Urban Mobility Portal (CO-UMP.eu), which will bring forward the achievements made by the project towards new horizons.
