ITS – Intelligent Transport Systems – have been recognised since long as an important tool to realise local, national and European policy goals for sustainable transport. ITS is being applied for facilitating mobility (making better use of existing infrastructure), improving safety and helping to mitigate environmental impacts and climate change. ITS can improve the performance of infrastructures, quicker, less expensive and with lower or no environmental impact, compared to building new infrastructure. ITS concerns also the use of information and communication technologies in order to improve the performance and the integration of the economic system as a whole. Developing and deploying harmonised ITS solutions for roads and for the interfaces with other modes is considered as one of the most important lines of action to realise sustainable transport across Europe.
From 2007 on, the EasyWay Programme had joined a multitude of key players for harmonised deployment of ITS across Europe. National Ministries and Road Authorities, Road Operators and partners from the private and public sectors of almost all EU Member States and neighbouring countries are deploying ITS Europe-wide in concentrations. The stakeholders from all over Europe are cooperating, exchanging knowledge and best practice, defining and building consensus on harmonisation and roadmaps, implementing harmonised ITS in a concerted way and cooperating on actual cross-border projects.
The EasyWay Programme (2007 - 2020) provide a reference for stakeholders in ITS deployment to develop guidelines for harmonisation, to build consensus, to exchange best practice and disseminate knowledge, to assess impacts of ITS and evaluate European deployment. By the different Project (Study and Works) generated under the EasyWay Programme, ITS deployment were and are accelerated in a harmonised way along Corridors and cross border sections of the TEN T Road noetwork making better use of existing infrastructures, to realise until 2020 ambitious objectives: 25% reduction of congestion, 25% reduction of fatalities and a contribution to the climate protection objectives of 10% less GHG-emissions from traffic.
To reach the above objectives, different Projects, both of studies and works, have been generated and co-funded by the European Commission.
On the EasyWay web Portal (http://www.its-platform.eu/) it’s possible to find the all the Sub-sites of the different Projects as "EasyWay phase I and II" (EWI and II), the "European ITS Platform" (EIP), the "European ITS Platform +" (EIP+) Ursa Major, MedTIS, Crocodile etc..., with all the relevant information.