Established in 2014, TM 2.0 is ERTICO’s leading Innovation Platform in interactive traffic management. The Platform’s 42 members, who strike the perfect balance between the public and private sectors, employ a unique concept based on collaboration, trust and co-opetition to achieve a safer, more efficient and sustainable mobility network. In the nine years since its set up, TM 2.0 has reached several significant milestones towards enhancing traffic management for all in Europe.
The public and private stakeholders in the mobility domain have often been competitors, looking upon each other with a degree of scepticism. The lack of complete trust between the two in the quality of the data provided by the other side has had negative consequences for road users, who at times receive contradictory route information. Under the ERTICO Innovation Platform TM 2.0, traffic management stakeholders now work together and have a discussion forum to understand each other’s needs and interests and agree on common principles to cooperate for the benefit of the users and identify business models that can facilitate the exchange of traffic information and real-time data.
Co-opetition at the core of TM 2.0
The guiding principle bringing stakeholders together in TM 2.0 is co-opetition. This concept refers to the willingness of private and public stakeholders who are competing in the market to also cooperate on common targets and goals, as the latter are set by the public authorities in their traffic management plans and measures. In essence, this means that when a public authority sets a geofencing need, for instance around a school or a stadium for a specific time frame, the other traffic management stakeholders (i.e., traffic information providers and traffic industry) do not guide drivers through the geofenced area.
“Co-opetition is no easy target, but as long as the traffic management stakeholders are aware of the value of cooperation in traffic management for the benefit of all, solutions and incentives can be found. Business models based on the principle of co-opetition must take into account business interests of the private sector, as well as the public authority and user interests. By offering a win-win-win scenario to all three, TM 2.0’s goal is to ensure a long-term successful cooperation to optimise traffic flows, benefiting all stakeholders,” says Dr Johanna Tzanidaki, Chief Innovation Officer at ERTICO and TM 2.0 co-Chair.
A holistic approach with Mobility Network Management
For the last five years, the TM 2.0 community has been actively engaged in developing the concept of Mobility Network Management (MNM). Within MNM, the TM 2.0 principles of co-opetition, trust and dialogue are taken to a higher level to apply on the entire mobility network (going beyond the road network), including all modes of transport. This is crucial to ensure that urban mobility becomes less congested, more sustainable and easily accessible for users, while also being adapted to their needs. MNM aims to balance the operations of mobility modes, all active within the same mobility network and sharing the same space. For example, in the case of congestion created on the road at points where the train network is experiencing an incident, passengers need to be distributed onto various mobility modes to reach their destination, while a balance within the mobility network needs to be maintained. To make effective multimodality a reality, the exchange of real-time information between mobility stakeholders of all modes is key to avoid silos in the management of the mobility system and ensure seamless and balanced mobility.
The MNM concept is now becoming integrated into the priorities of the European Union, reflecting the recognition of the importance of TM 2.0’s work.
Making a real difference
The work of TM 2.0 aids the traffic management stakeholders to take an important step towards agreeing on harmonised traffic management terms, procedures, specifications, and standards in the European Union by ensuring a common understanding of what the best practice is within the context of the exchange of good quality data for real-time traffic services.
TM 2.0 plays a major role in achieving ERTICO’s vision to improve mobility, together with its Partners, in Europe and beyond. It is also actively working with other ERTICO Innovation Platforms to support the overall deployment of ITS and the exploitation of its benefits. Following several impactful workshops organised with NAPCORE and TN-ITS on the revision of the RTTI Delegated Regulation, TM 2.0 will organise a hybrid workshop on 19 October on ‘RTTI: Traffic Management Measures and Traffic Circulation Plans and the Feedback Loop’. The Workshop will host a number of projects doing important work on this topic in the Netherlands. TM 2.0 workshops are open to the entire mobility community.
You can read more about TM 2.0 and its achievements on the TM 2.0 website, including its recent active role in the ISFO Symposium 2023.
