90 high-level experts will gather to define the Smart Transportation Infrastructures of the Future

Join us at the B19 Country Club in Brussels, Belgium on 3 February 2016 for the 2016 STA Annual Conference and Innovation Awards Ceremony. Be a part of this landmark event reviewing the Smart Transportation Infrastructures of the Future.

This one-day landmark event brings together key opinion leaders and business professionals to explore the current and future states of Smart Transportation Infrastructures. In a unique and dynamic atmosphere delegates are invited to participate in-person on virtually through our state-of-the-art online platform.

The Conference Programme is available for download here.

To register for this conference we kindly invite you to send an e-mail to info@smart-transportation.org with your name, position and organisation details. We look forward to seeing you there.

The 2016 STA Best Innovation Projects

European Field Operational Test on Safe, Intelligent and Sustainable Road Operation (FOTsis)

There are more cars and trucks on the roads driving more kilometres. As a result we are  facing more traffic jams, higher fuel bills and increased CO2 emissions. More than 40, 000 people continue to be killed on EU roads each year. These problems cannot be  solved by building additional or extended roads. 

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) can contribute to the solution by making transport  safer, more efficient and competitive, more sustainable and more secure. ITS does this by  applying the latest information and communication technologies (telephone, satellite, computer, etc.) to transport.

FOTsis (European Field Operational Test on Safe, Intelligent and Sustainable Road Operation) is a largescale field testing of the road infrastructure management systems needed for the operation of seven close-to-market cooperative I2V, V2I & I2I technologies (the FOTsis Services), in order to assess in detail both 1) their effectiveness and 2) their potential for a full-scale deployment in European roads.

FOTsis has tested the road infrastructure’s capability to incorporate 7 innovative and cooperative systems at 9 Test-Sites in four European Test-Communities (Spain, Portugal, Germany and Greece).

The TEV Project

Roads design needs to advance: highways should be faster, safer, cheaper to build and capable of carrying much higher capacity. They should enable conventional electric cars to have a limitless range. They should facilitate autonomous driving technologies and smart mobility.

TEV is a design for compact, electrically powered highways for use by electric vehicles with autonomous driving capability. This includes private cars, public transportation, shared transportation and light freight. The electric roadways are designed for rubber tired vehicles, but are called “tracks” because they use single lanes (i.e. they have no rails as railways do).

The TEV Project is an open-source initiative that got started in the summer of 2012. The  project invites collaboration and investment in an open design of TEV infrastructure.

TEV’s design includes both “single mode” vehicles that stay on the track at all times and “dual mode” vehicles that can also be driven manually on normal roads. Dual mode transportation is not a new concept, but recent advances in technology now make it practical to implement.

The 2016 STA Person of the Year

Dr Alistair Clark, Managing Director for Environment and Sustainability, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Dr. Alistair Clark was appointed Director of the Environment Department of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in 2001. In 2007, his title changed to Managing Director, Environment and Sustainability.

The Department consists of approximately 25 environmental and social specialists who undertake environmental due diligence and monitoring of the projects in implementation.

Dr Clark's role includes ensuring that all investments are consistent with the Environmental Policy and Environmental Procedures of the EBRD. He is also responsible for providing strategic direction to the EBRD with respect to the implementation of the Bank’s environmental mandate and the incorporation of environmental aspects in all sector and country policies and strategies.

In addition, Dr Clark serves on the Energy and Environment Management working group and is vice chairman of the newly formed Energy Efficiency Advisory Committee of the EBRD. He also actively contributes to the Multilateral Financial Institutions Environment Group and represents the Bank at many international agency meetings.

Labelling Smart Roads – Discussion Paper 4/2015 published

31 December 2015

Road infrastructures must adapt their role in a smart, green and integrated transport system that today faces a number of challenges: efficiency, safety, security, congestion, climate change and budgetary tightening.

This Discussion Paper - authored by Dr. Elena de la Peña, Chairperson of the STA Technical Committee on Smart Mobility, TC1 and a group of collaborators - sets out a number of recommendations for the deployment of Smart Roads by proposing a comprehensive labelling system that measures the sustainability performance of a road infrastructure - in other words, its social, environmental and economic implications in the framework of an integrated transport system.

NEWS OF INTEREST

European Commission sets sights on connected cars to warn drivers within three years.

The European Commission has declared that connected cars should be on the road by 2019 as industry representatives and public authorities agreed a shared vision for deploying co-operative intelligent transport systems.

Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications have a "strong potential to improve road safety and road transport efficiency," the report states, but says without common action, deciding where to start investing, and how to make systems inter-operable, would be problematic. The report is the work of the C-ITS Platform, bringing together stakeholders in the field, has agreed a common technical framework, with services such as hazardous location notifications, slow or stationary vehicles and traffic or road works ahead warnings, and weather conditions reports.

CEDR Call 2015.

With an overall budget of 3.6 million euro from nine CEDR members, CEDR Call 2015 opened on 15 December 2015 and will close on 15 March 2016. 

General information regarding Call 2015 is available here

All public documentation relating to the Call is available here

The Programme Manager is Transport Infrastructure Ireland, with responsibilities implemented by Dr Albert Daly.

Call 2015 will have four research programmes as follows. 

Call 2015: “Climate Change: From Desk to Road”

Call 2015: Freight and Logistics in a Multimodal Context

Call 2015: User Needs in a Multimodal Context

Call 2015: Asset Information using BIM