In this final podcast about the 2019 ITS European Congress, we hear from one of the most knowledgeable ITS experts, Professor Eric Sampson, about the three Congress streams: Smart Cities, Automation and MaaS.
In the interview with SMART Highways editor Paul Hutton, Prof Sampson talks about the key points that came out of the discussions, including how cities are trying extremely hard to deliver the smart cities agenda but are finding it difficult because their city planners’ department that doesn’t necessarily talk to the roads department and are not used to the overlap.
“There are cities that are coming to terms with this,” he says, “In some cases driven by a different agenda for example the air quality in a city.” He also talks about freight deliveries which drives innovation.
Prof Sampson offers his views on the need for harmonisation of regulation, “Get yourself organised,” he says, “Have some sort of common system of regulation… and that message was loud in Eindhoven – it wasn’t as loud in earlier congresses.” He also discusses testing of driverless vehicles and compares it to the pharmaceutical industry and questions the necessity of reaching Level Five autonomy in driverless vehicles.
Regarding Mobility as a Service, Prof Sampson talks about his reservations regarding and how people are now realising it is not as simple as some thought it would be. “The goal that you won’t need to own your own transport, you won’t need to buy a year’s worth of train commuting service… is just a little bit too simplistic… An awful lot of conventional systems need to be changed and so far there has not been enough coordination.”
It’s well worth the 20 minute listen! Click here to listen to the podcast.
