The 12th ITS European Congress closed with a record of over 2,500 people attending, 952 delegates and 27 media professionals and journalists. It was a week full of events, sessions, and networking opportunities for all those participating.  With the theme “ITS Beyond Borders”, the event was organised by ERTICO – ITS Europe in partnership with the European Commission and hosted by the City and Eurometropolis of Strasbourg from 19 to 22 June 2017 at the Strasbourg Convention Centre (Palais de la Musique et des Congres de Strasbourg).

Here are some  highlights of this year’s ITS Congress, the most successful so far.

Visibility for start-ups, young professionals and SMEs

The event opening day gave substantial exposure to start-ups thanks to the Start-up Boulevard and Innovative Companies, an initiative of the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg.

Students, start-ups and SMEs had the opportunity to present their projects in the European Transport Innovation Challenge and the 12 winners pitched their idea at the European Commission stand on Tuesday 20 June. The topics varied from news transport applications and services; futuristic services for moving people and goods in cities; services for people with reduced mobility and emergency service; robot platform; parking, railway and cycling services.

Thought-provoking programme

The main programme of the Congress included three Plenary and six Executive Sessions with all-star speakers and over 90 Special, International, Technical, Scientific, Project and Commercial Sessions covering seven  topics. Amongst all, Connected and Automated Driving (41 sessions), Mobility Services (18 sessions), and Transport Network Evolution (17 sessions) were the top three topics represented.

Some side events to the official programme included the Energy Summit organised by four major organisations in the field of energy in France (AFG, SER, UFE and UFIP); the 5G enabled Connected and Automated Driving workshop which brought together different sectors to discuss the limits of a single network to meet the requirements of an evolving connected car market; and the EU Funding Workshop organised by the European Commission to present existing EU funding mechanism.

A highlight of this year was the second Mayor’s Summit which gathered 23 cities (Aalborg, Alba Iulia, Bordeaux, Brussels, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Funchal, Glasgow, Hamburg, Helsinki, Helmond, Istanbul, Luxembourg, Montreal, Mulhouse, Odense, Strasbourg Sofia, Szeged, Timisoara, Umeå, Vienna, Vilnius), the European Commission, the Investment Bank and ERTICO – ITS Europe. The Summit focused on some broad topics including low emission zones in cities; innovative solutions for urban logistics; and automated public transport.

Lively exhibition and demonstrations

110 organisations and private companies exhibited their latest products and services on a 5000sqm exhibition area. The exhibition was well frequented and featured presentations on the different stands, demonstrations and cocktail receptions. 23 of the 121 ERTICO Partners had their own stand.

ERTICO had a large participation in the demonstration programme as well, with three live outdoors demos: i_HeERO, CO-GISTICS and MOBiNET.

ITS Strasbourg in numbers

  • 2800 registered participants
  • 952 Congress full delegates
  • 27 media professionals
  • 110 exhibitors
  • 5000 sqm exhibition area
  • 6 live demonstrations
  • 50+ countries represented
  • 100 Sessions

Daily videos available on YouTube

Day 1 – Tuesday 20 June
Day 2 – Wednesday 21 June
Day 3 – Thursday 22 June
Week highlights

Pictures available on Flickr!