Three major, converging trends are revolutionising mobility in cities, delegates at the 11th ITS (intelligent transport solutions) European Congress have been told.
The opening ceremony involved some duplication of effort
The event in Glasgow is organised by Brussels-based trade body ERTICO – ITS Europe, with a theme of ‘Delivering future cities now’ and will largely focus on increasing connectivity, bringing new services to users and improving communication in a sustainable way.
Opening the event, Cees De Wijs, chair of ERTICO supervisory board, said: ‘It is a very exciting time for ITS and under this year’s Congress there are three major trends revolutionising mobility in our cities: Cooperative ITS, Urban freight and Mobility as a Service.
‘We will not only see that these trends will gain in momentum over the upcoming years but also that they will converge. This convergence will be driven by connectivity and data exchange which will break down the existing silo thinking in the mobility industry.’
A pre-launch version of the ITS Observatory database, co-ordinated by ERTICO, is being presented at event before going live in October 2016.
According to ERTICO, the Observatory is a ‘new kind of shared knowledge resource … an interactive information marketplace with features to help support a dynamic ITS community of public authorities, system owners and suppliers, service providers and users in order to deliver effective solutions and connections to peers’.
The event also saw the first meeting of the MaaS (mobility as a service) Alliance - a public-private partnership launched October, which has been officially established as an independent organisation in Brussels.
Its members include the Finnish Ministry of Transport, ERTICO, Cubic, MaaS Finland, Siemens, and Xerox.
The mobility as a service topic itself is heavily represented at the Congress, with plenary, executive and special interest sessions focusing of different aspects of the issue.
Mr de Wijs said: ‘Mobility as a service has been hot news in all corners of Europe since it was presented at the ITS Europe Congress in Helsinki two years ago. The MaaS Alliance is the initiative dedicated to building the foundations for a fast-growing and open market in MaaS, for Europe and globally.’
Traffic management company Siemens is demonstrating the latest traffic management modules of its Stratos system at the Congress. According to the company, Stratos was developed using the latest cloud-based technology and ‘delivers scalable real-time traffic management, information and control, ranging from basic monitoring to strategic control of complex urban traffic environments‘.
The Congress takes place until Thursday 9 June at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre and is hosted by Glasgow City Council and Visit Scotland.
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