An enthusiastic audience of all ITS stakeholder groups, business, investors, politicians, MEPs, MPs, participated in the first day of TEN_T 2016 in Rotterdam 20 June 2016. In the plenary session, EU Commissioner for Transport, Violeta Bulc, stated that transport is the co-creator of so much else and paves the ways to solutions. Transport policy should address the big challenges in the core market: efficiency (such as competitive logistics services) and connectivity with expansion to global, emerging markets.
As core content drivers for these big challenges are people, decarbonisation and digitalisation. People should be in the middle of all transport solutions. Whatever transport initiative, the key question should always be “Who are the people that will gain from it?”. Digitalisation will help efficiency and connectivity vertically and horizontally. Mrs Bulc also identified two additional drivers for efficiency and connectivity, namely innovation and investment.
Investments are a key driver for economic growth. Mrs Bulc stated that the European transport sector has been heavily underinvested. Transport being one of the key drivers of competiveness, the EU has been losing its competitive edge. The CEF is 24 billion euro for the period 2014-2020 while in fact the estimated needs are 700 billion euro.
One of the CEF funded projects is I_HeERO. I_HeERO is addressing the need for EU Member States to upgrade their PSAPs in compliance with the ITS Directive (2010/40/EU), thus enabling eCall to be correctly implemented across all EU Member States.
eCall (based on the European emergency number 112) is the emergency system that automatically alerts rescue services in case of vehicle crashes.
The device will have to be fitted into all new models of cars and light vans by 31 March 2018. Similarly, EU Member States must put in place by 1 October 2017 the necessary Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP) infrastructure to process eCalls.
The action will also undertake studies on the extension of eCall to other types of vehicles not included in the EU legislation on eCall, i.e.: powered two wheelers, trucks and dangerous goods carriers. Furthermore, it will also examine the requirement for data integration and define conformity assessment for all PSAPs as required by the legislation.
I_HeERO participated in the TEN_T days 2016 exhibition.
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