This is the first in the new series of Research Theme Analysis Reports produced under the new Transport Research & Innovation Portal (TRIP) Continuation project for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG-MOVE). It covers the research theme Urban Mobility. The purpose of TRIP is to collect, structure, analyse and disseminate the results of EU-supported transport research and research financed nationally in the European Research Area (ERA), together with selected global research programmes. The TRIP web portal can be found at http://www.transport-research.info. The purpose of this Research Theme Analysis Report is to provide an overview of research performed (mostly) in the EU collated by the TRIP, providing a view across many projects that fall under the theme. It provides an assessment of the reported results from the research projects, giving scientific and policy perspectives. The theme of Urban Mobility has been divided into seven subthemes, as follows: • accessibility; • freight transport; • intelligent transport systems (ITS); • low carbon transport technologies; • sustainable public transport; • Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs); • urban land use. The key findings from a scientific perspective are: • There is a common trend toward an increasingly integrated approach to urban mobility research. This is particularly evident in the research on SUMPs, freight transport and ITS. This level of integration is likely to increase further and to be applied across all aspects of urban mobility. • There is a need to continue to develop and deploy vehicle technologies optimised for use in an urban environment, particularly for urban freight transport (e.g. electric microvans, cargo bikes). • Significant progress continues to be made in the development and demonstration of the use of new vehicle technologies, particularly electric and hydrogen-fuelled zero emission vehicles. • Multimodal passenger transport solutions to improve public transport have received significant attention and have been demonstrated in a number of projects, in particular under the CIVITAS (City, Vitality, Sustainability) programme. • There has been a wider involvement of key stakeholders in research projects, such as private freight companies in urban logistics projects and projects in the SUMPs area. However, a greater involvement is still needed, particularly in transposing business models and practices into policy schemes. • In the area of SUMPs, the funding priorities should focus more on how to create an ‘ideal’ SUMP, how to analyse the impacts of these plans and of their particular tools and packages of measures, the further use of ITS and supporting sustainable mobility and analysis of transport behaviour, mode choice awareness raising and stakeholder involvement. The key findings from a policy perspective are: • The trends in research on accessibility show a clear shift from issues primarily related to the disabled to a broader focus on people with reduced mobility, such as the elderly. This provides an indication of the focus that will be required in future urban developments in Europe to address the challenges of an ageing population. • The evolving requirements for urban freight transport (e.g. as a result of e-commerce) need to be taken into account in land-use and transport planning, as well as local economic development strategies. • There is a need to develop an adequate and appropriate infrastructure to support developments in urban freight transport, not only for new concepts for consolidating and delivering goods, but also to support the use of electric freight vehicles operating in urban areas (cargo bicycles and other two-wheeled vehicles, and micro e-vans). The deployment of a charging infrastructure within the whole management and business models for electric freight vehicles are crucial issues to be addressed to boost use among logistic operators and thus achieve a more sustainable urban mobility. • The ITS domain has addressed and developed a number of specific applications. However, to support an effective and sustainable integration of urban freight transport into urban network management, additional research effort should be carried out on data collection for planning and policy formulation. Models for data sharing and cost-efficient data collection on urban freight should be considered. This also requires legal expertise related to privacy and competition issues. • The data privacy aspects, payment allocations and the role of organising bodies with regard to international use of public transport ticketing systems should be clarified. This area of research should cover equity, institutional and market organisation issues rather than pure technical or economic issues. • Policy intervention may be required for setting standards in the ITS sector to ensure that the technology is able to deliver the expected safety, user satisfaction and competitiveness benefits. In particular, policy is required in relation to autonomous vehicles. This concerns the safety and quality standards for information exchanged between vehicles, infrastructure and control centres. It also includes the question of responsibility in case of a collision involving an autonomous vehicle. Eventually, the question of driving licences with the use of selfdriving cars or the condition of the driver will need to be addressed by policy. • To date, there is little agreement on the minimum requirements for a SUMP. There is a need to agree on common European standards, to prepare a list of appropriate measures and packages of measures with clear analyses of their various impacts, and to contribute to more precise and easier-to-do This definition of a SUMP should also include a common European standard for interoperable public transport systems, added value ticketing, payment and added value services — including multimodal transport systems — to replace the numerous national standards that have been developed to date. Binding standards at an EU level would ease the use of public transport and multimodal mobility services for international travellers. The priority research gaps identified are: • There is a need for further research on economic assessments in relation to sustainable public transport. For example, research on urban transport taxation, fare policies, etc.; analysis on financing and social assessment; and evaluation of various public transport services and measures. • Previous studies have proposed concepts of smart urban logistics with freight distribution centres. However, to date, their impact on real-life freight services in towns and cities is limited. Further research is needed on the drivers, barriers and business models for inter-company cooperation on urban territories. A large-scale implementation with a city fully supporting and fostering a smart and co-operative urban freight system would be needed for proving feasibility and impacts. • A problem not solved by ITS applications for the end users of all transport modes so far is the level and the personalisation of information provided. To impact user behaviour in a certain way, different users need to be addressed in different ways. Respective psychological research (e.g. in combination with response to hazardous events) could be covered by future research programmes. • To help meet the EU goal of halving the use of conventionally fuelled cars in urban environments by 2030 (and phasing them out in cities by 2050), there should be a research focus on increasing the attractiveness of public transport and how to organise it better, how to build interchange zones/nodes, the development of alternatives for urban motor traffic that are free of carbon dioxide (CO 2) and building the potential of new or unconventional transport systems and vehicles. • For hydrogen-fuelled vehicles, there is still a cost and a fuel efficiency problem to be solved. This is particularly relevant to public transport vehicles, which are perhaps most suited for this technology. • There may be a need to implement incentives to encourage the uptake of low-carbon vehicle technologies and their use in an urban environment. However, despite some good practice examples, it is still not clear how such incentives should be designed to maximise impact and to minimise side effects on other policy goals. Fundamental research of drivers, barriers, risks and opportunities of different incentive structures, including through the EU energy taxation rules, with respect to the great differences in European cities and regions is still lacking. In general, the analysis of the research being performed in this report indicates that there is relatively little overlap between multiple projects and programmes. Those overlaps that have been identified include: • There appear to be significant overlaps in research on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication standards and applications. • Overlaps can be found among research projects on acceptance and awareness within the field of sustainable public transport. The projects analysed bring a large potential for dissemination of best practice, worst practice and lessons learnt to other cities, and the community of researchers and practitioners. • Synergies can be found among the projects on SUMPs. In particular, there are strong synergies between the CIVITAS projects and research projects on specific issues such as transport behaviour analyses. The CIVITAS projects benefit from the findings of other research projects. Equally, the research community builds on the experience and findings of case studies of measures applied in the CIVITAS demonstration cities. The CIVITAS projects and other related research are now being brought together under a single umbrella, CIVITAS 2020 (part of Horizon 2020), which is likely to reduce any overlaps. The research agenda on urban mobility is driven by a number of key challenges and trends that are being faced in cities across Europe and which are the focus of European policy objectives. These cover: • Increasing urbanisation. Over 70 % of the European population lives in urban areas and this percentage is increasing with time. This puts pressure on urban transport systems, leading to increased congestion, collisions and environmental impacts, all of which impair urban mobility. • Ageing populations. As human life expectancy increases, there is a need to cater for an ageing population that may have physical disabilities and different transport needs. This brings new requirements for accessibility and sustainable public transport. • Developments in communications. Information technology is changing the way people communicate and access goods and services, and so affects the requirements for travel. E-commerce is impacting on the requirement for urban goods delivery, teleworking is reducing the need to travel and both are influencing how we use urban space. • Road congestion. This is a key issue threatening urban mobility. Innovative technologies and measures are required to manage road use in urban areas. • Collisions and safety. Collision rates have been dropping in Europe, but safety is still a key driver of transport policy and research. • Greenhouse gas and air-quality-related emissions. These are perhaps the key environmental impacts of urban mobility. Low or zero emissions vehicles may be part of the solution, but other measures (such as the promotion of walking and cycling, and greater use of sustainable public transport) are also required. The projects reviewed across the Urban Mobility Research theme are tackling all of the key policy objectives of the European Commission with no clear gaps. However, the research is still not really progressing the ‘step-change’ in urban mobility that Europe needs to tackle the issues of congestion and pollution. For example, there is much innovative research on telematics and new vehicle technologies, but they are primarily being used to do what we do now better, rather than do things differently. Also, electric and fuel cell technology is being used now in existing types of road vehicles but, as new technologies, they could have the potential to bring greater changes to wider mobility patterns. Research in communication and telematics for intelligent roads has resulted in the development of numerous algorithms and data standards for V2V and V2I communication. However, to date, none of these standards has become universal due to the business protection interests of the industries participating in the research or the different requirements and applications of the systems. Thus, there are significant barriers to the transferability of the solutions that have been developed to date. This review suggests that a lot of good technical research has been carried out and that there is plenty of good practice at the practical level. Key barriers to greater application of the research include: • Institutional issues at the city level — coordination and cooperation between city departments and more innovative approaches to public-private partnership (PPP) (especially in relation to urban freight). • Standardisation issues — this is a particular barrier for ITS and cargo units in urban freight. In both cases, this is partly driven by protecting private business interests as technologies are developed, but also in relation to new vehicle technologies and refuelling infrastructure. • Sharing knowledge and greater involvement of stakeholders — there is a huge amount of knowledge and information generated from research projects related to urban mobility. However, although efforts are always made to disseminate the results, including via fora such as CIVITAS, the expertise that has been generated tends to remain in the hands of the leading cities and practitioners. Therefore, there is a need for an increased focus on the issues associated with practical implementation of research outcomes alongside the innovations and new technology. The outcomes also need to be disseminated to all groups with an interest in urban mobility, with key stakeholders being involved from the outset. Recommendations made from this review, with the aim of further improving the outputs from the research on urban mobility, include: • Continue to develop and promote an integrated approach to urban mobility research. Priority should be given to projects that aim to work across different transport modes and address combinations of challenges. • Develop and trial new mobility concepts. Apply and integrate technologies innovatively with the aim of achieving a ‘step change’ in urban mobility patterns. • Ensure that institutional and implementation issues are tackled as part of the research, so that the outcomes bring solutions closer to use in practice. • Engage key stakeholders from the outset. Work with key implementers and innovators to help the uptake of the ideas beyond the project. • Continue with the core technology research in ITS, vehicles and fuels. These technologies are expected to provide the building blocks for an innovative, integrated and comprehensive approach to urban mobility. However, it is also important to seek new solutions appropriate for the urban context such as urban-specific delivery vehicles. (Author/publisher)
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