Workshop “ITS Mobility 2050”, Athens, February 2014
Building the future from today
The ERTICO Research Sector Platform organised a workshop on ITS Mobility 2050 warmly hosted by ICCS in Athens from 5th to 7th February. The workshop aimed to brainstorm on a conceptual level how the world and the Mobility of people and goods will look like 30 years from now. The expected output was to provide a global proactive concept paper that could be used as a decision making tool at a national and at a local level, a paper that puts forward the main issues that ITS development policies should considered in the future.
Every Partner from the Research Sector Platform presented a personal vision relevant to the “Mobility 2050” concept strengthened with various ideas and proactive suggestions. Several common ideas were highlighted by all of the participants.
It was imagined that in 2050, design will change significantly; vehicles will be smaller, smarter, compact and modular. Most of the public transport infrastructure will be underground and automated, users will be connected everywhere and all the time, the” internet of things” and open data will become a reality. Zero congestion and reduced CO2 emissions are expected in urban areas, walking in the city will be preferable rather than driving.
The expected global tendencies are going towards a Connected Collaborative Mobile Eco System where all actors and decision makers are working together. Meanwhile, mobility will be monitored at the individual level; door-to-door services will be strongly demanded by the society. It was imagined that users will be more able to share and that car ownership will be abandoned.
What does it mean for us today? The attendees of the meeting concluded that ITS experts should focus on certain strategic topics and develop relevant scenarios for future ITS development. It is essential to plan and to collaborate, to spread awareness through decision makers at the European level, but also at the local level, in cities where ITS development is still unknown.
It was commonly agreed that current ITS strategies/policies should focus on traffic management of all kind (centralised and decentralised) and for all type of vehicles, information access will be fast and omnipresent. It will be also necessary to develop performance modelling tools in order to provide different scenarios and imagine various cases for ITS development allowing investment, decisions and strategies to be tested before they are enacted. Encouraging cross-sector training in ITS will be essential to adapt ITS to users’ needs and to specifics local contexts.
The main question raised during the meeting was the issue of bringing all the stakeholders together Above all, a strong collaboration between different sectors and various scientific disciplines (energy, transport, telecommunications, society and health) should be encouraged in order to extend the capabilities of cross-sector activity-mobility planners and managers.
The Mobility in 2050 will be green, connected, user friendly, accessible and affordable, hence the work towards the future should start today.
A few examples of scenarios for Mobility 2050
(Source CTAG)
