This page presents the Highlights of the European ITS Platform published in 2019. You may use the table of contents below to skip directly to the highlight of your interest and use the “back to the table of contents” link at the end of each highlight to return to the Table of Contents.
Table of Contents
19/12/2019
The EU EIP A2 Expert Groups Freight and Logistics, Traveller Information Service and Traffic Management met in Helsinki to align on a common approach for updating and presenting the existing 18 ITS Deployment Guidelines. The group took significant steps towards a new web-based format to present the knowledge in one European ITS Core Services – Reference Handbook, which is currently being drafted with interactivity and ease of use in mind.
To facilitate Europe-wide harmonisation and support new ITS implementations, the knowledge from the ITS Deployment Guidelines and the experiences and lessons learned from the collected Best Practices will be documented in one Reference Handbook. It will be easy to access and searchable for keywords. Furthermore, it will include clickable links and references, as well as consider three audiences/user groups (strategic decision makers, implementation managers, expert engineers). These three audiences will be able to reach their relevant sections fast and effortlessly.
To ensure that the knowledge included in the Reference Handbook is up to date and future proof, activity 2 works on further processing the content, ensuring that it is compliant with the Delegated Regulations, relevant in the ITS community and includes the latest knowledge obtained mainly from implementations within the ITS corridors.
Click here to return to the table of contents
The European Platform for Intelligent Transport Systems (EU EIP) was present at the 26th PIARC World Road Congress.
As part of the technical session “cooperation strategies between national and local road agencies“, the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) presented „EU ITS Platform on Future Motorway Traffic”. The main focus of the presentation was on the strength of the Corridor-based ITS implementations and the three pillars within EU EIP activity 2:
In addition to the oral presentation, EU EIP also participated in the poster sessions. The poster presentation of EU EIP enabled direct discussions with interested delegates. In total it was a great opportunity to disseminate results and experiences gained from the Corridors and to promote EU EIP to a relevant and enthusiastic audience.
17/12/2019
Cross Corridor Cooperation Workshop: ITS Corridor Evaluation Workshop / Seminar5/6 February 2020, Paris, France
The ITS Corridor Evaluation Workshop / Seminar is organised by Arc Atlantique and EU EIP Activity 5 – Evaluation. Its purpose is to educate delegates and help with the process of continually refining our approach to ITS Corridor evaluation. It comes at an opportune time as the ITS corridors enter the latter stages of their deployment programmes. Furthermore, we are recently learning more of the need for our community to communicate our successes and benefits more widely and in a meaningful way to various stakeholders in our work.
More specifically, the goals of the event are the following:1. Facilitate cross corridor discussions concerning the evaluation process amongst the operational level of the ITS corridors.2. Assist EU EIP Evaluation Activity in disseminating evaluation methodologies and best practice.3. Embed the importance and benefits of evaluating ITS corridors and the need for a harmonised approach.4. Inform and educate participants in the workshop/seminar.5. Report on the event with results and actions as applicable.
The content will be finalised in January 2020. Topics will include:1. The benefits of a harmonised approach to corridor evaluation.2. Approaches taken by each of the corridor projects.3. How to evaluate a corridor when a corridor project may have deployed ITS at specific points on the corridor route.4. Informing business cases for more investment in ITS.5. Evaluation measurements – The EU EIP KPI‘s.6. SWOT of the current arrangements for evaluation at a cross corridor level.7. Approach taken for evaluating C-ITS projects.8. Hot topics within the community.
The event will be led by a number of people from within our community who are leading evaluation processes or have experience in this area. It will take the form of an interactive workshop/seminar.
The event is aimed at all those who will be responsible for providing evaluation data on corridor deployments and their associated impact. In particular, those who might not have been closely involved in the evaluation activities to date and therefore need to be informed.
Useful information:Date & Time: 05.02.2020 (starting at 14:00) – 06.02.2020 (finishing at 16:00). Exact times will be advised.Location: ASFA in Paris, FranceLanguage: EnglishFee: Free of chargeParticipants: Limited places will be available. In order for us to gauge demand and help with planning we ask you to send an email to Paul Wadsworth (Capita) and Daniel Cullern (Capita) indicating if you are interested and likely to want to attend.
Results are available at the achievement page.
16/12/2019
National Access Points (NAPs) represent an important building block of European ITS Infrastructure.EU EIP Sub-Activity 4.6 is committed to the harmonisation of such NAPs, in order to make them interoperable and effective across European ITS stakeholders.An important harmonisation item are Metadata, describing the data offers of NAPs in structured and agreed manner.
European NAP partners, under the coordination of EU EIP Sub-Activity 4.6, have developed an update of the “Coordinated Metadata Catalogue”. This work is a blueprint for Metadata structures at each individual NAP in Europe. It defines a common, minimum Metadata set, in particular 32 Metadata elements, including their description, types and obligation levels.
It is considering all data and information domains of the EU Directive and the respective Delegated Regulations. The current update of the “Catalogue” also covers multi-modal travel data and services, according to Delegated Regulation (EU) No 2017/1926.
The “Catalogue” and the accompanying two Annexes can be found at the NAP Achievement page.
The presented work is a further milestone of EU EIP in supporting and harmonising data provision and exchange via NAPs.If you are interested in this work, please contact EU EIP Sub-Activity 4.6 member Peter Lubrich.
04/12/2019
On November 18th– 19th 2019, the second edition of Future Mobility Week was held in Turin, Italy.
During the Future Mobility week, the “Smart Road & Smart Traffic” workshop was a good opportunity for an innovative road technologies roundup, together with the leading personalities of the sector.
The covered topics were: European policies, national initiatives, legislation, technology and best motorway practices.
In this context, the European ITS Platform was represented by Roberto Arditi who was invited to hold a report to illustrate the European perspectives of intelligent mobility, starting from the EUEIP Platform activities.
The Future Mobility Week main goal was to illustrate how much is changing the mobility of the future, starting from the connection among: Smart City, infrastructure, physical security and information technology; above all, the connection among individual, collective and corporate mobility of people and goods.
The event was intended to bring together all the leading operators in the roads management field: companies, public administrations, associations and start-ups.
02/12/2019
C-Roads Platform and EU EIP gathered European C-ITS experts to attend the C-ITS deployment and evaluation workshop the 5th – 6th of November 2019 in Brussels.
The meeting proceedings and a detailed program are online at this link
Last October 17th the European Driving School Association (EFA) and the Simulation of behavioural aspects for safer transport (SIMUSAFE) organized in Torino (Italy) the 2nd International Workshop. The aim of the workshop was to answer the question: “Technology vs. driver training: a threat or an opportunity?”.
This event is the follow-up of a previous EFA meeting organized in Brussels last May. Representatives of the European Commission attended the event where the topic of drivers and driving instructors training towards the use of autonomous vehicles was considered in the light of promoting safety.
In fact the topic was deepened during this new European occasion leading the attention on the massive presence of technology in vehicles and on the important responsibilities to those who will train future drivers.
The meeting was organized by the EFA general secretary Manuel Picardi and opened by the Italian Congressman Giuseppe Cesare Donina, rapporteur for the national law updating the Italian road code.
A pan-European panel of experts tried to outline the perspective of objectives for driving schools comparing current methodologies with the need to make young (and old drivers) aware of new opportunities from the digitalization of transport.
The workshop was populated by experts with a wide range of affiliations: national associations, institutions, Universities, Italian driving schools, experts involved in the world of road safety. The European ITS Platform was represented by Roberto Arditi who contributed to the debate bringing the point of view of infrastructure operators and the needs coming from the digitalization of roads.
On November 20th, 2019, the Mediterranean Corridor Forum was held in the Brussels – premises of the European Commission. The event was Organized by the European Commission and chaired by Ms. Iveta Radičová, former Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic and currently high representative of the Commission for the Coordination of the Mediterranean Core Corridor.
The coordinator of the Platform Federica Polce (MIT), the coordinator of MedTIS Malika Seddi (ASFA) and Pierpaolo Tona (INEA) attended the meeting contributing to the debate. Roberto Arditi (SINA) held a speech on “European ITS Platform: towards a smarter and more efficient mobility – successful cases on the Mediterranean core network corridor”. The presentation can be downloaded following this link. A few case studies from MedTIS were considered in the presentation. MedTIS is to be fully presented in the forthcoming meetings of the Forum. During the meeting Ms. Iveta Radičová, proposed to extend the key performance indicators of the corridor: the European ITS Platform proposed to support this kind of action through its own experts on evaluation and KPI already adopted by ITS corridors.
Mr. Wojciech Sopinski, DG MOVE Advisor to Mediterranean Core Network Corridor, presented the state of activities for Working Groups. The Mediterranean Corridor is the main east-west axis in the TEN-T Network south of the Alps. It runs between the south-western Mediterranean region of Spain and the Ukrainian border with Hungary, following the coastlines of Spain and France and crossing the Alps towards the east through Italy, Slovenia and Croatia and continuing through Hungary up to its eastern border with Ukraine.
Mr. Herald Ruijters DG-Move Director Investment, Innovative & Sustainable Transport of the European Commission, during ITS Forum in Utrecht, invited Member States to boost further cooperation among ITS Corridors in order to cover needs of Core Network Corridors (see forum proceedings). Actions from Platform leaders were assumed accordingly.
The European ITS Platform launched a new action to support Core Network Corridors. Contacts happened already with North Sea-Baltic and Scandinavian-Mediterranean. In order to go toward a completion of the cooperation, new contacts recently happened with Mediterranean and Atlantic Corridors.
The European ITS Platform was presented on November 20th at the Forum of the Mediterranean Core Network Corridor (see this article).
Moreover prof. Carlo Secchi, coordinator of the Atlantic Core Network Corridor, after a bilateral meeting with Roberto Arditi, considered the activity of the European ITS Platform and CEF ITS corridors worthwhile of assessing a harmonized approach from different CNCs.
Manuel Picardi, general secretary of EFA (the European association of driving schools), talked to the European ITS Platform about challenges and opportunities of digitalization in the future of European transport.
A video is available in the YouTube channel of the European ITS Platform.
28/11/2019
On October 1st and 2nd a workshop on the topic “Highly automated driving, an exploration of benefits, cost and ODD in Europe” was held in Turin (Italy): the event was organized by the European ITS platform, and hosted by SATAP and SINA at ASTM headquarters.
During the two days, expert from road operators and road authorities from most European Countries of the Platform discussed important topics related to the automated driving and cost benefits, from the perspective of road operators (see this page for the official report of the event).Matteo Ferrario, journalist of the Italian magazine “Strade e autostrade”, present in Torino, wrote an article about the two days of high level technical discussion.
Please follow this link to download the full article (in Italian).
For additional info, please do not hesitate to visit the website of the publisher “Strade & Autostrade” EDI-CEM Srl – www.stradeeautostrade.it
The European ITS Platform organized a workshop concerning “Highly Automated Driving: an exploration of benefits, costs and ODD in Europe”.
The proceedings of the event are now available online following this link.
A detailed report is even available here.
An Italian journalist attended the event and his article (in Italian language) is available in this page.
27/11/2019
The ESPORG (European Secure Parking Organisation) conference 2019 took place in Brussels last November 7th. It was organised in cooperation with International Road Transport Union (IRU) and the EC. The conference was opened by Mr Dirk Penasse, general manager of ESPORG followed by a number of speakers.
Mr. Louis Hendriks (EU EIP activity leader National Access Points), one of the speakers, explained the administration aspects of exchanging Truck Parking data to the National Access Points (NAP) in Europe by using the new self-declaration form. The purpose of this form is to harmonise and reduce administration burden for SSTP operators. The self-declaration is a result of a joint effort between EU EIP and ESPORG. For the SSTP operators this is a practical tool to promote their Truck Parking to truck drivers. Find the uniform self-declaration form for Truck Parking and more on the EIP NAP webpage.
Mr. Fredric Maas presented the EU Parking Academy supporting practitioners who would like to obtain additional knowledge on safe and secure truck parking areas. These courses are in line with:
– the rules of the new certification EU-Parking Standard
– the recommendations of the Study on Safe and Secure Parking places for Trucks (Feb 2019)
The main topic in the panel discussion was how to handle the urgent need for more safe and secure truck parking areas in Europe.
In the afternoon it was explained by Mr. Frederik Rasmussen (DG MOVE Road Transport) how to make use of the available EU funds (CEF) with regards to the budget of EUR 60 million for building and/or upgrading safe and secure truck parking areas in Europe. Deadline to submit applications for funding is 26 February 2020. Read more. The proposed works for optimizing the use of existing safe and secure truck parking areas through static and dynamic parking information, have to comply with Commission Delegated Regulation No (EU) 885/2013 and apply Union standards (e.g. DATEX2) and Guidelines (Easyway Deployment Guidelines).
As a further contribution from EU EIP to the Truck Parking community, a recently published Quality Framework for Intelligent Truck Parking Services was presented. Torsten Geißler, leader of EIP activity “Determining Quality of European ITS Services”, explained the concept and goals of that framework.
Based on this, the session served to:
The slides from this session can be found here.
The Quality Framework for ITP can be found at the achievement page.
Regarding the urgent needs to improve the Truck Parking situation in Europe, EU EIP and ESPORG will continue close cooperation in the field of ITS.
21/11/2019
On 12 and 13 November approximately 40 experts from 14 EU countries and Switzerland met at BASt in Bergisch Gladbach (Germany) to discuss the future challenges of Traffic Management Centres (TMCs). The Programme consisted of 15 presentations and sufficient time for discussion among the experts. A visit of the TMC in Leverkusen concluded this very successful workshop.
This article highlights the main outcomes of the workshop. The workshop report and the presentations can be downloaded from the following links:
Workshop report (1,3 MB)
Presentations (zipfile) (45 MB)
Background
Traffic volume continues to increase, new technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, Car2X and further innovations in transport, continue to develop and the interfaces between the urban and interurban areas become more important. Traffic Management Centres have to deal with these challenges by implementing innovative systems and software and a closer cooperation with neighbouring traffic centres, other modes, as well as between the urban and interurban area. The aim of this workshop was to present the challenges of traffic management centres, existing and planned innovative systems and software as well as possible cooperation between traffic centres.
New technologies
A number of presentations showed the implementation and potential of new technologies for TMCs. For example, North Rhein-Westphalia is currently using Floating Vehicle Data for Traffic Management for rerouting and dynamic lane management. In the Netherlands a Proof of Concept is carried out with Smart Cameras, which have shown an annual savings potential of 2700 staff hours for the Netherlands. However, this development does not lead to a staff reduction but to an increased efficiency, as it enables the road authority to achieve more with the same staff. C-ITS is already demonstrated in Hessia and plans exist for Greece (Egnatia Odos), also in the framework of C-ROADS Greece. The benefits are clear: traffic managers will have access to more information from the vehicles and at the same time will also have the possibility to communicate directly with the drivers/vehicles. In Belgium and the Netherlands information from road users is collected for Incident Management purposes. Through WAZE, information about broken-down vehicles, accidents and dangerous situations becomes available to the TMCs. This is an additional channel of information, supplementing other systems like AID, detection loops, cameras and FCD.
Data
Many of the new technologies will result in more data, for example C-ITS. But the question is for example what type of data should be collected from the vehicles (Floating Vehicle Data) and for what purpose. Whatever the answer, data should be made accessible through open data platforms and National Access Points, in order to facilitate the re-use of data and to allow app builders to develop new applications and thus new services to end-users. This does not only apply to FVD, but to all kind of data (both real-time and historical), such as traffic light signals, accident data, etc.
Challenges
During the workshop a number of challenges were addressed, both in presentations and during the discussions. Technological developments go too fast compared to time needed for tendering and installation of ITS. New ways have to be found on how to deal with these fast-changing technologies. TMCs also have to think about how to deal with the ever-increasing amount of data that is becoming available to them. What data is needed, and how can it be used? Which data must be stored, and how should it be stored? The new ITS systems and the associated data coming with it, will require different processes and different qualifications of the staff working at the TMCs.
With respect to incident management it was noted that none of the participants in the workshop has much experience with how to deal with the salvage of the various types of electric vehicles and trucks with different kinds of (automatic) gearboxes. Exchange of best practices would be considered very useful. It is also believed that closer cooperation with vehicle manufacturers will have potential for further advances of TMC automation.
Furthermore, the question was raised who will be responsible for the routing of autonomous vehicles? Is it the service provider or is this the responsibility of the road authorities (i.e. the Traffic Management Centres)? And what are the possibilities for the drivers to influence the rerouting?
Changing role of TMC?
Public and private actors in the Traffic Management and Traffic Information domain should trust each other and it should be clear that all parties should benefit from cooperation. If not, there is no business case for this public/private cooperation in TM2.0. Furthermore, it can be noted that TM2.0 is not only for real-time rerouting, but also can be applied in relation to Mobility as a Service (MaaS). It can be concluded that the role of TMCs will remain, since traffic management will be needed to keep the traffic system working. However, the tools for traffic management, and the interaction with other parties will change.
14/11/2019
In the end of October 2019, a meeting on the topic of traffic management plans (TMPs) was held in Maribor, Slovenia. Representatives from five Central European Member States have participated and discussed the possibilities of implementing actual changes in their processes for coordinating and activating TMPs. Participants encompassed motorway operators, developers and automobile club representatives from Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia.
An agreement was reached on a unified way of communication in live operation between different traffic control centres, starting already in December 2019. An application will be employed enabling that there is no longer a need for communication via email (however it can be maintained for information purposes) when exchanging important information between control centres. In this way, the activation and management of TMPs will become much easier and more transparent, which is most favourable in the context of transnational traffic management in the central European area.
12/11/2019
EU EIP Sub-Activity 4.1 has published an update of the “Quality Package” for the domain of Multimodal Travel Information Services (MMTIS), representing a first quality framework related to data and information in MMTIS.
The presented “Quality Package” contains quality-related definitions and concepts, as proposed by EU EIP partners for the use in Europe:
The “Quality Package” is available at the achievement webpage.
The presented work is a further milestone of EU EIP Sub-Activity 4.1 in establishing agreed and validated quality frameworks for data and information in the ITS sector.
For the first time, the complex and multi-layered domain of multi-modal mobility was explored in terms of data and information quality. Even if Quality-related definitions for MMTIS cannot be determined in a complete and deep manner at this point of time, this document is a first approach for a common understanding on how to understand and handle MMTIS Quality.
The presented paper also aims to support the MMTIS data provision in accordance to Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 2017/1926.
The current version of the “Quality Package” is based on a recent Validation phase, involving MMTIS stakeholders and aiming for better understandability and applicability of the various Quality-related definitions.
The report for this Validation phase is available at the achievement webpage.
If you are interested in this work, please contact the Sub-Activity leaders Torsten Geißler (BASt) or Peter Lubrich (BASt).
Last October 24th 2019, SINA organized a training session entitled “Roads for our Future” and based on experiences out of CEF Programs.
The human society is experiencing a period of frantic changes, both on technologies and in the approach to the operation of infrastructure and mobility. Seizing examples from deployment guidelines and European Implementations, the impact of information technologies on the operation of road infrastructures was presented and discussed. This meeting was the first one of a series of training sessions that SINA has been organizing for its own staff and interested partners.
81 experts participated in the training session including SINA staff members, representatives of the Traffic Police, of the Lombardy Regional Authority, of Lombard Motorway Concessions, of ASTM and SINELEC.
Angelo Rossini, CEO of Aosta-Valley Motorways, found conclusions of the day, after the overview of SINA speakers. Through this meeting, information was disseminated. The perspectives of “smart roads” were drown from results of the European ITS Platform and European Corridors of interest of Italy (MedTIS, URSA MAJOR and Crocodile).
Hereinafter the program of the event:
06/11/2019
Phase 2 of the pilot Tyre Pressure Measuring System at the Dutch A16 highway was completed some time ago. You can download here the report with the findings of phase 2. A video of the pilot (only in Dutch) can be seen here.
Phase 3 started in September. The number of participating companies has increased to 139 with 29.913 license plates in the database. Rijkswaterstaat received various feedbacks on the reported deviations. In some cases the tyre pressure was only slightly too low. In most cases it appeared that there was a flat tyre or serious under-pressure. The first impression is that the reliability of the system is sufficient. Rijkswaterstaat keeps working on the improvement of the system and its measurements. New test drives are foreseen and based on this the supplier IRD will further optimize the system.
On November 12th 2019, 9.30 till 12.00, the first task force workshop about Road corridor information document, Road-CID was held. The workshop was hosted in BAST office in Bergish Gladbach (D) and was be prior to the workshop: ”future challenges for traffic management”. The workshop is carried out as a task within the Cross Corridor Cooperation (CCC) activity of EU EIP.
Why Road-CID?
ITS projects on corridors are often deployed in a similar manner but they are managed on a local, regional or national level and they are not connected to each other. Every separate organisation and traffic centre cares mostly for their own region or metropolitan area. But Corridors represent the perspective you get when you look on traffic from satellite; you see flows that form trans-European movements, mainly consisting of freight vehicles. From a corridor perspective, there is a need for some kind of descriptive umbrella and that should be provided through the Corridor Information Document, CID. CID is a type of document that is already used by the CEF Rail Freight Corridors. For CEF road corridors we will call it Road-CID so there will be no confusion.
The idea with Road-CID is to have one structured way of describing the corridors, which will be the first step to actually work on a corridor level. The Road-CID will contain descriptions of the general structure of the corridor like network overview including important hubs, terminals and bottlenecks and also which organisations that are concerned. It describes how the traffic management centres are structured as a series of interconnected traffic management areas. It also describes which ITS services (with focus on services relevant for corridor operation like HGV parking) that are available and where and especially which TMP´s that are in operation and how they connect. Hence the Road-CID will provide the reader with an understanding of the general structure of traffic management on the corridor level. A future Road-Cid will also contain information about for example geo-fencing, platooning and digital traffic rules.
The workshop
The focus of this first workshop was to discuss and outline a possible content description of a first generation of Road-CID. A first “candidate draft” for Road-CID was circulated one week before the workshop as the basis for discussion.
If you are interested please send an email to Karolina.Hedberg (Trafikverket)
03/11/2019
Operators of National Access Points (NAPs) and National Bodies (NBs) from 14 different countries met at the LEF Future Centre in Utrecht (The Netherlands) on 30 October 2019. Marinda Hall, LEF-facilitator, opened the workshop and introduced the organisers of the workshop, Timo Hoffmann (BASt) and Louis Hendriks (Rijkswaterstaat). The meeting was a follow-up of an earlier event in November 2018, when NAP operators and National Bodies also met in Utrecht during the ITS Forum 2018.
The fact that so many organisations turned up for the workshop shows that there is a need to exchange best practices, get operational support and find common issues worth working on jointly (e.g. legislation, harmonization, standards, formats, templates, …). The workshop also made clear that there is a large variety in the progress made with respect to the implementation of NAPs and establishment of National Bodies in the various EU countries. Even though quite a few participants stated that they have operational NAPs, it soon also appeared that the amount of data is not always satisfactory, especially if one looks at the amount of data provided by private organisations. For the National Bodies there are still questions about the assessment of compliance, the use of self-declarations, how to carry out random checks and last but not least how to report to the European Commission.
During this dynamic workshop a range of issues was discussed (see overview of topics here) and an agenda was created for priority issues to be dealt with in the future. If one thing became clear from the workshop, it was that there is a need for a more structural exchange between NAPs and NBs across Europe.
The LEF approach made it possible for more than 30 participants to be much involved in lively discussions. This setup also fulfilled the need the give the NAP/NB community a boost to challenge future in close cooperation. Follow this link to the photos (photographer Gab Franken) to get an impression of this successful event.
At the end of the workshop it was agreed that a small group of participants will work on creating a NAP/NB position paper on a more structural organisation, describing among others the role, targets, objectives, connections, ambition, functions and a workplan for such an organisation. The idea is to set up a ‘light’ organisation (chair/secretariat) with working groups, 2 or 3 meetings per year and an IT infrastructure to share information.
If you want to know more about this NAP/NB Group or want to get involved, please contact Timo Hoffmann.
Read more about NAPs in Europe
29/10/2019
EU EIP Sub-Activity 4.1 has published a “Quality Package” for the domain of Intelligent Truck Parking Services (ITPS), representing a first quality framework related to data and information in ITPS.
The presented “Quality Package” contains quality-related definitions and concepts, as proposed and agreed by EU EIP partners for the use in Europe:
The “Quality Package” is available via the achievement webpage.
The presented work is a further milestone of EU EIP Sub-Activity 4.1 in establishing agreed and validated quality frameworks for data and information in the ITS sector. The presented paper also aims to support the ITPS data provision in accordance to Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 885/2013.
If you are interested in this work, please contact the Sub-Activity leaders Torsten Geißler (BASt) or Peter Lubrich (BASt). We are also looking for stakeholders interested in participating in an upcoming validation phase, where the introduced quality concepts will be tested with real-life ITPS data.
28/10/2019
The deliverable “Autonomic functions implemented in existing ITS – status update 2019” is now available. The document is the 2019 update of the report first delivered in 2016 and is based on the most recent developments in the partners’ countries and the feedback received from the stakeholder engagement activities carried out after the first edition was presented. The main objective of the report was to identify autonomic and automated TMC functions existing in ITS implementations. The work was carried out using input from the participating partners in Finland, Germany – Hessen, UK – Scotland, Spain, and The Netherlands.
The document gives you a description of the functions and applications which are already installed in these countries, including an expert judgement of the partners regarding the scales of automation for each implemented function. Another outcome of this report is the list of TMC functions that are considered by the authors as the most relevant to benefit from automation.
Document
Task 4 Autonomic functions implemented in existing ITS – status update 2019
11/10/2019
On 8 October 2019 two EU EIP partners participated at the session ‘Building a data layer: Network of national (data) access points – NAP’, as part of the 2019 Digital Transport Days in Helsinki.
Timo Hoffmann (BASt) presented the idea of launching a bottom-up group of NAPs and National Bodies (NBs) to exchange knowledge and experiences, common approaches, data standards, how to get data from international organisations, etc. This cooperation of NAPs and NBs should help to improve the operation, processes and content of the National Access Points. A kick-off workshop for representatives of European NAPs and NBs is organised for 30 October 2019 in Utrecht (NL)
In the same session Marjolein Masclee (Rijkswaterstaat, Chair Datex II) highlighted, as a panellist, that in the Netherlands data sharing already existed before the delegated regulations were adopted. For example, the National Data Warehouse, already collected and shared data for 19 local, regional and national road authorities. And public transport companies already were obliged to provide various kinds of public transport data (timetables, bus stops, deviations from planning, etc.) to NDOV. Thus, the need of data sharing is fully supported by Dutch road and public transport authorities.
The panel session was chaired by Claire Depré (EC – DG MOVE), who summarised the main conclusions at the end of the session:
10/10/2019
Save-the-date
C-Roads Platform Working Group 1 “C-ITS Organisation” and Working Groups 3 “Evaluation & Assessment” as well as EU EIP C-ITS Deployment support calls European C-ITS experts to attend the C-ITS deployment and evaluation workshop the 5th – 6th of November 2019 in Brussels.
C-ITS deployment is under way in Europe. The aim of the workshop is to gather experts to share knowledge, issues and solutions, on key topics today for the C-ITS deployment and evaluation. While C-ITS technical specifications are currently been prepared, the workshop will concentrate in organizational and governance issues, as well as evaluation approaches and results, and any other open issues requested by the C-ITS pilots. This will valuably contribute to recommendations for the continuation of the C-ITS roll-out.
Draft Program is available here.
07/10/2019
After the publication of the Delegated Regulations on Information Services in 2013, 2015 and 2017 National Access Points (NAPs) and National Bodies (NBs) should be „up and running“ in all EU Member States by now. However, the status of the operational level and readiness of NAPs and National Bodies varies greatly among Member States. This is partly caused by the fact that many NAP operators and National Bodies still have a lot of open questions:
The EU EIP project has dealt with a number of these issues such as developing declarations of compliance, guidelines for metadata and common features of NAPs and annual state-of-the-art reports with best practices. However, EU EIP is a project which ends in 2020, and its partners are mainly national road operators, whereas the latest delegated regulation on MMTIS requires a wider stakeholder involvement (other modes, other data, cities/regions).
Therefore, the EU EIP has launched the idea to form a bottom-up group/network of actual NAP operators and National Body representatives. This will be open to all Member States and will support NAP operators and NB representatives to speed up the implementation of NAPs in Europe through common approaches and best practices exchange. Possible goals might be:
This idea will be the main topic of the European NAP/NB workshop.
When: Wednesday 30th October 2019
Time: 9:00 – 16:00
Location: Rijkswaterstaat LEF Future Centre in Utrecht, Netherlands
Optional: Welcome diner on Tuesday October 29th in Utrecht city centre
The aim of the workshop is to:
Registration is open for NAP operators and National Body representatives from all EU Member States. For registration (free of charge) please send an email to Timo Hoffmann (BASt)
23/09/2019
Traffic volume continues to increase, new technologies such as autonomous vehicles, Car2X and further innovations in transport continue to develop and the interfaces between the urban and interurban areas become more important. Traffic Management Centres have to deal with these challenges by implementing innovative systems and software and a closer cooperation with neighbouring traffic centres, other modes, as well as between the urban and interurban area.
On 12/13 November 2019, traffic management experts from various European countries will gather in Bergisch Gladbach (Germany) to discuss these topics in the workshop “Future Challenges for Traffic Management Centres”.
The aim of this workshop is to present the challenges of traffic management centres, existing and planned innovative systems and software, as well as possible cooperation between traffic centres. The programme consists of 4 sessions with in total 15 presentations from nine different countries, covering the following topics:
The full programme is available here.
The workshop is hosted by BASt and organised by the Next-ITS 3 and EU EIP projects, in cooperation with the ITS corridor projects Arc Atlantique 3, Crocodile, MedTIS and URSA MAJOR neo.
Participation in the workshop is free of charge. However, registration in advance is mandatory, as the number of participants is limited.
You can register by filling in this online registration form.
Workshop information
Date: 12.11.2019 noon – 13.11.2019 noon. The workshop will end with a visit to TMC Leverkusen (scheduled in the afternoon of 13.11.2019).
Location: Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt), Bruederstr. 53, 51427 Bergisch Gladbach, Germany
Language: English
Fee: Free of charge (Registration in advance is mandatory)
Participants: Maximum 50
20/08/2019
The URSA MAJOR neo Evaluation Workshop, which was hosted in Frankfurt on the 26th of March, brought together 15 URSA MAJOR partners for a very successful discussion on the ITS Evaluation as well as the exchange of experiences from past evaluations. The aim of this meeting was to identify possible optimizations in the evaluation process and to ensure that all partners involved are equally informed of the evaluation activity. Furthermore, a first analysis of the implementations to be evaluated was also part of the discussion.
The workshop was introduced by Stephanie Kleine (International Coordinator of UM2 and UMneo) and evaluation lead Luca Studer (Politecnico di Milano). Luca Studer started with a presentation of the basic concepts of ITS project evaluation, in which he explained the structured procedures during the evaluation process. After several questions, mainly due to the time horizon of data for the evaluation and suggestions about the pollution estimation, Luca also explained the meaning of deployment and benefit KPIs in detail. It was decided, that all national evaluators will get the Evaluation kit, containing the KPI definition document, the DG MOVE KPI document and the template, in order to achieve an efficient and harmonized evaluation process. Then examples of evaluation studies were presented and the structure for reporting evaluation results was clarified. Finally, each national evaluator presented the projects to be evaluated, followed by a discussion of the possible criticisms and problems.
In conclusion, the URSA MAJOR neo Evaluation Workshop was a great opportunity to discuss the evaluation activity, the results and the assessment of the evaluation process. Thus, there are no more obstacles to effective execution of the evaluation activity. It was agreed also to complete the first paragraphs of template by the end of April, which guaranteed a timely start of the evaluation process.
19/08/2019
The regulation for provision of EU-wide multimodal travel information services including the creation of National Access Points for travel and traffic data is going to be a major revolution for the public and private actors involved in delivering mobility services throughout the whole EU. The regulation enforces adaptation to standards and mandatory opening of data to third parties for all. To meet deadlines all transport actors must establish open data interfaces adhering to the regulation and the masterplan. Already end 2019 the first part of this delegated regulation should be implemented in all Member States. This article, written by Søren Sørensen for the European ITS Congress 2019 in Eindhoven, provides a good overview of the delegated regulation 2017/1926, the link to MaaS and the potential impact on a series of stakeholders.
26/07/2019
The Italian magazine “Strade & Autostrade”(roads and motorways) interviewed Roberto Arditi, project manager of the European ITS Platform, about the future of ITS systems in Europe and the harmonization between the initiatives of single Member States of the European ITS Platform (EU EIP). For info: “Strade & Autostrade” EDI-CEM Srl – www.stradeeautostrade.it
05/07/2019
Freight transport, like all mobility, is changing due to increased focus on safety, efficiency and sustainability. Truck platooning and connected transport is seen as a means to reach safer, more efficient and sustainable freight transport. The Experience Week is part of the preparatory phase of the truck platooning pilot of the URSA MAJOR neo project. In this context the Experience Week Connected Transport was organised from 1 – 5 October 2018 in the Netherlands. This article presents a summary of the lessons learned during this week.
During the Experience Week 250 trucks of different transport companies tested the latest connected technology on public roads. This was the first time connected technology was tested on this scale, with regular drivers driving real time routes with loaded trucks. The latest connected technology systems contain trucks with adaptive cruise control (ACC), intelligent traffic control installations (iVRIs), in-car road works warnings and automated tire pressure measurement. During four showcases iVRIs, road works warning, convoy matching, tire pressure measurement and the gate-in/gate-out process were tested during day and night transport. The experiences gained in this week led to the formulation of six principles for connected transport:
1. Anticipate on the needs of the users: The needs of transport companies and shippers should be considered when designing the system as they are the ones that have to use them.
2. Start from the transport flow: Establishing end-to-end corridors will help all parties (transport companies, shippers, road authorities) to focus on the transport flow, bridging logistics and traffic management.
3. Central stage for the drivers: The opinions of truck drivers should be taken seriously, ask for their feedback, as they are the ones working daily with the system.
4. Think from the ecosystem: Problems could be solved on different levels. The Experience Week showed that the combination of convoys and iVRIs led to considerable fuel savings. This could be a trigger for accelerated implementation of the iVRIs by road authorities to reach their sustainability goals.
5. Don’t forget the secondary results: Platooning asks for more planning, standardisation and cooperation between different parties, leading to better performance throughout the logistics chain.
6. Design the system in cocreation: The showcases showed that the system can be designed on the drawing board, making the network approach crucial. Governments, entrepreneurs, education/research institutions and other actors like road users should all be involved in the cocreation of the design.
The Experience Week Connected Transport 2018 showed that connected transport has benefits for all parties, e.g. lower fuel consumption (one company claimed 6-14% fuel reduction), better traffic flow (green wave plus platooning resulted in 10-17% improvement), increased road safety (systems are 25-40 times more alert than drivers) and satisfied drivers. Thus making connected transport and truck platooning an important tool on the road to a safe, efficient and sustainable future.
For more information please download the full report (available only in Dutch).
28/06/2019
An important learning from the work in EU EIP is that investments in ITS are in general made in response to local needs. As local investments remove bottlenecks and improve safety they have a positive impact also on the performance of overarching corridors. But can road transport corridors constitute a basis for future traffic management? This was the core question raised at the EU EIP ITS Deployment Road Map workshop held in Rome 16 May, organized by Sub-Activity 4.3.
It is difficult to summarize the workshop conclusions in a few words, but it became clear that there is little support to the idea of developing Traffic Management on the basis of Core Network Corridors. A corridor represents “an air view” of important European transport flows, while traffic first of all circulate in networks around and between important nodes. Hence a corridor cannot be built – it is a logical layer based on information (“virtual” was used as description). However, network management need to be based on harmonized solutions to allow for corridor transport (notably freight) to function properly. Here platforms (like EU EIP) play an important role. We can also see that the rapid development of connected vehicles and cloud based information systems with many stakeholders involved changes the scene for traffic management which must be accounted for in the future. This architectural change makes it possible to construct “a virtual corridor” by selecting appropriate information from the clouds.
These and other conclusions will be further developed at a follow up workshop in Copenhagen 8 October.
For further information contact Jonas Sundberg (Sweco).
06/06/2019
EU EIP sub-activity 4.1 has produced an update of the Quality Package for Safety-Related and Real-Time Traffic Information Services (SRTI and RTTI).
After a recent validation phase, this current version of the “Quality Package” presents validated quality definitions, ready to be used in every-day practice by all SRTI and RTTI services and stakeholders in Europe.
The underlying validation was a based on a series of quality tests with European partners, in order to evaluate and back up the quality definitions in the Quality Package
The accompanying document “Practical Guidelines” has been also updated. It serves as a short practical description of what to do to measure and to document the quality of traffic information, from a data supplier perspective.
The presented documents show the efforts of EU EIP sub-activity 4.1 in establishing an agreed and validated framework for quality in the field of SRTI and RTTI.
Reader guidance:
Documents can be found at the achievement page
24/05/2019
The Joint Technical Secretariat invites you to visit the YouTube channel of the European ITS Platform to have a look at quick video impressions about the friendly and professional cooperation sparkled in the Member State Supervision Assembly. Video available through this link.
This video is nr. 13 of the channel.
23/05/2019
3rd Member State Supervision Assembly was held in Rome last 2019 15th-16th May within the historical library of the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport.
A leading group of the European key players met there: Representative of the European Commission INEA, Italian Coordinator, Representatives of Member States, Corridor Coordinators, Representatives of Implementing Bodies and chiefly ITS experts. They cooperate in establishing an open forum aiming at providing a joint contribution for the future strategy, for policy recommendation towards a better development and deployment of ITS services along European Road Corridors.
The Joint Technical Secretariat organized the meeting through interactive debates. The wide-ranging discussion covered many points of interest and decisions for acknowledging past results and target the future action of the Platform, among them:
European ITS Platform identified some concluding statements and recommendations:
To conclude … ITS, C-ITS, form opportunities for Road Authorities and Traffic management.
The European ITS Platform will continue to work on shaping this transition and gaining a common view on what needs to be done to anticipate the future while improving our day-to-day traffic management services at the same time.
We are looking forward to continue to help shape and support realistic deployment of ITS in traffic management now and in the future!
Video impressions of the meeting are available via this link.
21/05/2019
On 4 June 2019 the European ITS Platform (EU EIP) and Arc Atlantique project (AA3) will organise a Special Interest Session at ITS Congress Eindhoven on Traffic Management in a changing world – fulfilling ITS promises.
Traffic management is challenged by a strong evolution from the technological and organizational point of view. The Digitalization of transport, Connected and Automated Driving, the European dimension of services, multimodality (passenger/freight) and the emerging mobility challenges require even more cooperation and coordinated deployment strategies supporting new EC mobility policies. The goal of the session is to give insight into what the various actors (e.g. road operators, policy makers, automotive industry and service providers) need to do to be prepared for ITS deployment in the coming 5 years, based on current and future trends and developments influencing the traffic management domain. We focus on the coming 5 years, to keep the discussion quite concrete and avoid discussions about developments that are to come and they will have an impact on traffic management. For example, developments like automated driving are too far away, too general and not yet useable in day-to-day operations.
Session content
This SIS is organized by the European ITS Platform (EU EIP), a platform of European road operators, together with the Arc Atlantique 3 project, an ITS corridor implementation project. EU EIP and the ITS corridor projects organized a very successful ITS Forum in 2018. This SIS continues on what was discussed at the ITS Forum. The session will discuss currently relevant trends and developments in traffic management and actions that need to be taken in the next five years to fulfill these promises. Stakeholders from different disciplines will present their views on: how will new business relations influence traffic management, what is needed to implement new technologies, what is needed from other disciplines, what changes are needed in their organization to cope with these developments, what concrete actions are needed to achieve implementation, what projects are they already working on and what are their experiences, what are the requirements for traffic design, how do they ensure the correctness of traffic data to the road users, which assets do they need to develop to cope with the changes in traffic management.
Date: Tuesday 4th June
Time: 17.15-18.30
Room: commercial theatre
Organiser: Roberto Arditi, SINA
Moderator: Malika Seddi
Speakers: Suzanne Hoadley (POLIS), Claire Depré (European Commission, TBC), Roberto Arditi (European ITS Platform), Stephanie Leonard (TomTom), Torsten Geißler (BASt), Paul Wadsworth (CAPITA).
15/05/2019
On 7 and 8 May 2019 around 70 experts gathered in Verona to participate in the Intermodal Workshop in Verona, organised by the URSA MAJOR neo project. Host to the workshop was Interporto Quadrante Europa, located at the crossroads of the Brenner (north-south direction) and the Serenissima motorways (west-east direction), as well as the corresponding railway lines. Interporto Quadrante Europa extends over an area of 2,500,000 m².
On behalf of Interporto Quadrante Europa Mr. Matteo Gasparato welcomed the participants and then gave the floor to Mr. Gzim Ocakoglu of DG MOVE. Mr. Ocakoglu presented the EU policies on ITS and the Ditigal Transport & Logistics Forum (DGTL).
Then a number of speakers presented ITS for intermodal rail and port operations.
For intermodal rail operators (Hupac, Kombiverkehr) ITS:
In ports ITS plays a similar role via PCSs, e.g.
With respect to traffic management the following can be seen in ports:
Focusing on ITS tools for road and rail transport:
Focusing on ITS tools for ports:
Ports are installing automated gates in order to create an automatic reader system that can be integrated with a dynamic information system and it can interact with the city ITS giving information on incoming trucks and/or congestion.
As next steps the importance of the human element and the social acceptance of the digital transformation need attention:
An extensive report, the agenda and all Powerpoint presentations can be available here
25/04/2019
The next technical workshop and steering committee of CROCODILE will take place in Thessaloniki, Greece on 22nd and 23rd of May. We will cover topics like cross-border traffic management plans, Traffic Management 2.0 and the role of digitalisation. Follow us here to learn about the latest Member State implementations and plans for the future, we will keep you updated!
24/04/2019
After testing 8 intelligent road side units (iRSUs) in July 2018 in existing operational circumstances, in December 2018 another 20 iRSUs were installed to be used for the real-life pilot using floating car data instead of induction loops. Goal of the pilot is the application of this relatively new data source for ‘real time’ traffic management purposes (‘slow vehicle warning’). First results of the evaluation are available now and they are promising. The pilot is carried out by Rijkswaterstaat and is part of the URSA MAJOR neo project and is partly funded by the Connecting Europe Facility of the EC.
About 1.000 kilometers of Dutch highway is equipped with a slow vehicle warning system, which consists of (see picture below) induction loops (1), road side units (2) and speed message signs (3) to alert for traffic jams. On the A9 (Amsterdam-Alkmaar) a test site is in operation in which other data sources can replace induction loops to measure traffic speed and flow.
Floating car data (FCD) in the UMneo pilot is coming from 8-10% of traffic and can be used as input for the signaling system with a latency of 25 seconds at the max. This is very important. Latency of induction loops is very low, but induction loops measure at fixed locations. When congestion occurs between loops (on the average a distance of 500-1000 meters) it takes some time to measure lowering speeds. FCD has to “compete” with the attributes of induction loops.
Since December 2018 the pilot site is in operation. In technical sense the use of FCD works out fine and first evaluations show that from traffic engineering point of view the new data source provides similar alerts as the existing system with induction loops. Although FCD does not report all traffic (‘white’ traces in the diagram (see first diagramme of this article), the speed pattern that can be derived is sufficient for the application in real time traffic.
The final evaluation report is expected to be published before summer 2019. Dutch highway authority Rijkswaterstaat then is going to merge different data sources (in order not to be dependent of one source) and when the merging pilot also is successful, the existing roads with the system can use cheaper detection and another 2.000 kilometer highway without the system could be added with speed alerts on in-car devices instead of on expensive visible speed message signs above lanes. When this UMneo result will be achieved, slow vehicle warning (and other ‘real time’ traffic management applications such as eliminating shockwaves) could be applied in other countries easily and without expensive investments in road side systems.
A more extensive article on the Floating Car Data pilot has been published in NM Magazine (April 2019). The article can be read on-line by clicking this link (in Dutch only).
23/04/2019
The URSA MAJOR neo workshop brought practitioners from four countries (Germany, Italy, Czech Republic and the Netherlands) together to discuss current approaches to improving roadworks, as well as future perspectives.
Day 1 presented a couple of presentations of current projects to improve planning and performing roadworks. The aspect of planning mainly addressed the practical alignment of planned roadworks with road operators of the secondary road network. From today’s expectations it is no longer acceptable that parallel roadworks on the main and secondary network at the same time lead to congested alternative routes. The presentations from Autovie Venete, Rijkswaterstaat and the project from Rheinland-Pfalz showed how difficult it is to set up working cooperation between all road authorities. Technically, the option to provide web clients from a single system is a useful approach. In general, the growing importance and impact of roadworks is addressed by the implementation of powerful systems that allow optimal roadwork management and best possible information of drivers. Convincing examples where the presentation of the Nordrhein-Westfalen system and the online demonstration of the Bavarian system. An important aspect of significantly increasing the accuracy of roadworks information (in particular location and timing) was demonstrated by ANAS who use automated devices to online register activation and location of roadwork.
Day 2 opened the view in the future and featured three presentations from Hessen, Autostrade del Brennero and the port of Livorno that all showed deployment of C-ITS technology for warning road users in the scope of roadworks. The Hessen project is already in roll out stage and soon all safety trailers in Hessen will be equipped with C-ITS roadside units. Roadworks are an important field of deploying new technology for future automation features. This became clear in the CEDR presentation that showed how automotive industry and infrastructure operators will cooperate in general – including roadworks – to enable automated driving in the future. This is a future perspective, but the last presentation reported about a CEF application that is trying to start bottom up right now in that direction by promoting projects that digitise traffic regulation in general and make that data available.
The topic of the workshop was hot, and hence the discussion was intensive and the presentations showed up-to-date developments that were of very high interest for all attendants. The results were clear: roadworks is a field of dynamic and important developments, and therefore an URSA MAJOR neo forum like this to meet and share is extremely important and useful.
The presentations can be seen here.
15/04/2019
Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch national road operator, has carried out a research with smart cameras to monitor the situation on the road. These cameras will make the opening and closing of hard shoulder running faster, easier and safer. Smart software on existing cameras learns to detect abnormal situations such as incidents and debris on the road. The traffic manager in the traffic centre within seconds receives a signal and can respond immediately for example by closing the lane for hard shoulder running. The software is also able to measure traffic density and consequently open or close the lane for hard shoulder running.
Smart cameras: the future
The results of the first experiments are positive: smart cameras can be used to detect vehicles, traffic density and speed of the vehicles and during daytime also to detect abnormal situations.
The research is a first step to actually using the cameras in real-life. Rijkswaterstaat expects that in the future smart cameras can be used in other situations as well. The software for example should be able to detect trucks that are too high for a tunnel, but also to operate bridges based on the traffic situation and to detect accidents.
Current status
In 2018 a market consultation was carried out and specifications of the smart cameras were developed. This included a number of meetings with several interested parties, both national and international. In 2019 Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be added to the video chain and the Graphical User Interface (GUI) will be developed at the traffic centre in Rhoon. Together this will be a decision support system for the automatic operation (opening/closing) of hard shoulder running at the A13 (highway between Rotterdam and The Hague) and Incident Management cameras at the same location. First results are expected in 2020.
Smart cameras will take over routine tasks
Opening and closing of the hard shoulder requires 13% of total capacity of traffic managers. This is mostly a routine task that is performed mostly in peak hour periods. Smart cameras can take over this task, thus releasing extra capacity for important incident and traffic management. Operation and monitoring of tunnels requires 42% of staff capacity. Here too smart cameras can make a difference.
A short movie about the Smart Cameras project (2,5 minutes) can be watched via youtube here:
09/04/2019
Joint EU EIP 4.2 & L3Pilot stakeholder workshop, Athens, 25 October 2018
On 25 October EU EIP 4.2 and L3Pilot held a joint workshop on the impacts of automated driving and how to maximize the benefits. The workshop was held in conjunction with the L3Pilot consortium meeting in Athens.
The event began with introductory presentations on the EUEIP Facilitating Automated Driving activities and L3Pilot, followed by a session to frame the workshop topics:
During the interactive session participants voted responses to topic questions, with the panel commenting. The interactive session covered a range of AD and ODD issues including; the need for connectivity, infrastructure investment and designation of ODDs for specific AD use cases, as shown in the charts below:
Thank you to all who presented and participated! The meeting minutes can be downloaded here.
04/04/2019
This article, written by Howard Knott, IEA Logistics Consultant, is copied from the Supply Chain & Customs Newsletter (April 2019).
The IEA, working as a sub-contractor to Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) has been playing an active role in the development and promotion of an Intermodal Freight Route Planner within the EU-EIP intelligent transport systems East-West Corridor project. The main source of the funding for the project is the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility.The route planner, while initially focussed on the East-West Corridor running from Ireland through to Central Europe, now covers destinations throughout Europe and further afield. To read the full article please click here.
03/04/2019
Sub-Activity 4.5 partners participate to DG Updated processes by developing Guidance for creating DATEX II profiles by selecting in the model the minimum of classes and attributes allowing to guarantee the data exchanges among traffic managers and services operators compatible with the Directive action b requirements.
The 3rd list of consolidated user requirements presents the results of the work performed in 2018 among actors allowing to propose classes and attributes for five guidelines:
19/03/2019
Road Safety: new rules clear way for clean, connected and automated mobility on EU roads
On March 13th 2019, the European Commission has adopted new rules stepping up the deployment of Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) on Europe’s roads.
The new technology will allow vehicles to ‘talk’ to each other, to the road infrastructure, and to other road users – for instance about dangerous situations, road works and the timing of traffic lights, making road transport safer, cleaner and more efficient. The new rules are in line with the proposals on clean mobility introduced by the Juncker Commission, are a further step for modernising the European mobility sector, preparing it for climate neutrality in the second half of the century and contributing to the EU’s long-term goal of moving close to zero fatalities and serious injuries by 2050 (“Vision Zero”).
Commissioner for Mobility and Transport, Violeta Bulc said: “This decision gives vehicle manufacturers, road operators and others the long-awaited legal certainty needed to start large-scale deployment of C-ITS services across Europe, while remaining open to new technology and market developments. It will significantly contribute to us achieving our ambitions on road safety, and is an important stepping stone towards connected and automated mobility.”
The adoption is an important stage in enabling communication among vehicles. As of this year, vehicles, traffic signs and motorways will be equipped with technology to send standardised messages to all traffic participants around them.
The specifications establish the minimal legal requirements for interoperability between the different cooperative systems used. Interoperability will enable all equipped stations to exchange messages with any other station securely in an open network.
The cooperative element – enabled by digital connectivity between vehicles, and between vehicles and the transport infrastructure – is expected to significantly improve road safety, traffic efficiency and comfort when driving, by helping the driver to make the right decisions and adapt to the traffic situation.
Next Steps
The Commission decision takes the form of a delegated act. The publication of the delegated act is followed by a two-month period during which both the European Parliament and the Council may oppose its entry into force.
The act is based on the ITS Directive, which accelerates the deployment of these innovative transport technologies across Europe. Several stakeholders took advantage of the possibility to give feedback on the draft act in a public consultation over four weeks in January.
The Commission has also proposed in May 2018 that cars, trucks and buses be equipped with new and advanced safety features, such as emergency braking, intelligent speed assistance and enhanced pedestrian and cyclist protection (see full list here). The features are an enabler of automated mobility, promising EU industry leadership in this important area. Negotiations by co-legislators on this proposal will start tomorrow.
For any further information, please refer to the Website of the European Commission.
On 7 and 8 May 2019 an Intermodal Freight Workshop will be held in Verona, including a visit to the rail-road terminal of Interporto Quadrante Europa in Verona. The workshop is organised by the URSA MAJOR neo project.
Focus of the workshop is on the integration between Traffic Management Plans of the ports and rail-road terminals with TMPs of the road and rail infrastructure managers, to optimise the management of freight flows on the TEN-T core network. For example parking guidance, gate automation, slot times, buffer area management. More specifically the following topics will be dealt with:
The workshop will be held on 7 May 2019 from 14.00 – 17.30 and on 8 May from 09.30 – 16.00.
More about the Intermodal Freight Workshop in Verona can be found at the achievement page.
Participation to the workshop is free of charge, but participants should be registered before. This can be done by sending an e-mail to V. Cipollone (Ramspa)
The Intermodal Freight Transport workshop is the result of the international cooperation established in the URSA MAJOR neo project between The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Aim of the porject is to deploy ITS on the corridor from The Netherlands via the Alpes to Italy, including ports and rail-road terminals.
04/03/2019
On March 1st, the national Italian symposium on autonomous driving (S.E.M.A.) was held. The event performed within the premises of the Roman Aquarium in the capital district of Rome.
Key Italian experts on autonomous mobility had the opportunity to discuss across seven thematic tracks: social acceptance and ethics, road safety, cyber-security, responsibility and regulation, autonomous vehicle technology, new models of transport for people and goods, societal transformation and jobs. Several national authorities had the floor. At European level, Dario Tamburrano, member of the European Parliament and Shadow Rapporteur for the report on a comprehensive European industrial policy on artificial intelligence and robotics addressed the Italian community. Italian experts of the European ITS Platform were invited to the debate.
A wide range of National authorities and organizations granted a patronage for the symposium: the Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport, ANAS, the town halls of Roma Capitale and Torino, the Automobil Club of Italy, the Role of Professional Engineers of Rome Province, the Role of Psychologists of Lazio Region, TTS Italia, the National Italian Committee of the World Road Association – PIARC, the consulting body for Road Safety, Mobility and Sustainability of Roma capital city. The event was organized by Leonardo Annese.
Other information (in Italian):
During the week from Monday 18th February to Friday 22nd, the 81st session of the ECE Inland Transport Committee took place, featuring participants from all over the world, and from the European Commission, International Institutions, Governments, Industry, Academia, NGO.
This year, the focus was on Automation in Transport, the transformational consequences of the so- called Fourth Industrial Revolution on the way world moves and connects.
On Monday 18th, the kick-off moment featured a joint meeting between the two ECE Fora (Global Forum for Road Traffic Safety (WP.1) and World Forum for the Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29) dealing with automated vehicles and their safe deployment in traffic.
At this link (follow Special Session page) the agenda indicating the four thematic panels, together with the power points presentations given by Prof. Bryant Walker Smith, University of South Carolina, EU Commission (DG GROWTH) and Prof. Bruce Mehler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
On the following day, the policy segment approaching the issue of automation across all the other transport modes. The opening speeches were given by HE Mrs. Olga Algayerova, UNECE Executive Secretary and the UN SG Special envoy for Road Safety Mr. Jean Todt and the Sustainable Transport Division Director Mr. Yuwei Li, who chaired the Panel.
Matthew Baldwin, the European Coordinator for Road Safety, took the EC contribution among the several high profile speakers who took the floor to underline the importance of paying the right regulatory attention to the fast paced automation in transport, in order to make it beneficial for all the countries across the world, by considering the different challenges in optimizing the SDG concept of safe, inclusive and sustainable mobility.
A Ministerial Resolution on “Enhancing Cooperation, Harmonization and Integration in the Era of Transport Digitalization and Automation” was endorsed by the distinguished attendees.
Additional information can be found in this page
On March 1 the EU EIP project published its NAP Annual Report 2018 on the status and harmonisation of National Access Points (NAPs) in Europe. This report (82 pages) follows earlier reports published in 2016 and 2017.
Status of National Access Points in Europe
The first part of the NAP Annual Report 2018 covers the status of the NAPs in Europe. From 2016 to 2018 a gradual increase can be seen of the number of implemented and/or planned NAPs. For example, already 18 countries have a (partly) operational NAP for Real Time Traffic Information (RTTI). However, if we look at the delegated regulation on Multi Modal Travel Information Services (MMTIS), we notice that only 4 Member States have a (partly) operation NAP. So, Member States still have a lot of work to do to meet the deadline of December 2019.
Harmonisation of National Access Points
Apart from monitoring the development of NAPs in Europe, the EU EIP project also aims at harmonisation of the NAPs in Europe. The report therefore also elaborates on a number of aspects that require harmonisation:
The report concludes with an overview (status per December 2018) of the National Access Points and National Bodies responsible for assessment of compliance in Europe. This status can also be consulted on the so-called NAP map.
All documents are available on the NAP achievement page
21/02/2019
According to Delegated Regulation (EU) 2015/962, road authorities and road operators shall provide static road data, which they collect and update, in a standardized format, if available, or in any other machine-readable format, on a non-discriminatory basis; and digital map providers shall collaborate with the data providers to ensure that any inaccuracies related to static road data are signalled without delay to the road authorities and road operators from which the data originates.
Within the CROCODILE 2 consortium, a Working Group on Static Data was established with workshops being held in 2016 and 2018. There, the availability of static data in the Member States was checked, and also the next steps and a pilot definition were defined. As for 2019, a common pilot will be established in the course of the CROCODILE 3 project. Further activities will be based on an initial agreement on the handling of static road data, which was elaborated in the CROCODILE 2 consortium. Read it here!
In the meantime, CROCODILE partners are also getting ready for the upcoming technical workshop in May 2019. It will take place in Thessaloniki, Greece, covering the topic of Traffic Management Plans. A first meeting on cross-border TMPs already took place in February in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Motorway operator DARS presented their TMP project with the goal to create international TMPs on five corridors. Each Member State and operator considered by a TMP will get access via dedicated API in order to be able to integrate the TMP into their own system. An important part will be the clear definition of responsibilities, encompassing the data flow from detection to processing and publishing of an event up to triggering the activation of a TMP. Further coordination meetings will follow in the course of 2019.
19/02/2019
Activity 2 prepared and released its annual deliverables for 2018. The two deliverables released are the “Achievements Report on collecting best practice in ITS deployment 2018” and the “Stakeholder Liaison Report 2018”. More information on these reports and links to download them can be found below.
This report presents the accomplishments of the Platform in the collection of new and updated Best Practices (BPs) achieved in 2018. It starts with an overview of the BP collection process and presents relevant statistics from the past year. The main part of the report contains summaries of 36 BPs collected in 2018, sorted by Deployment Guideline and accompanied by an expert view on the breakthroughs each BP achieves and the new insights and lessons learned it provides.
The report is available here.
A2 liaises with external stakeholders in order to disseminate EU EIP results, discuss framework conditions, elicit requirements and follow ITS deployment in other projects (Urban, C-ITS…)in the vast and still growing landscape of ITS. To this end, A2 organises targeted stakeholder workshops and participates in major events in the field presenting its tasks and results, as well as taking an active part in the strategic dialogue with stakeholders by participating in round table discussions.
This report presents the 5 major events of the year 2018, which concern the liaison with external stakeholders. It contains short reports of these events in chronological order. Links to the relevant websites or the EU EIP portal (www.its-platform.eu) are provided at the end of each event report, in order to provide the interested user with more detailed information.
Reporting on these two topics by EU EIP A2 is annual. Therefore, at the end of 2019, similar reports will be released presenting the accomplishments of the year 2019.
08/02/2019
Sub-activity 4.1 has so far provided several frameworks to define and assess the quality of data, information and services in various domains of ITS.
The current task is to touch on the so-called Optimum Quality, exploring quality aspects in terms of what is most cost-efficient in terms of socio-economic benefit/cost ratios, and looking for different operating environments.
To set the stage for this task, 4.1 partners from Finland (Strafica Ltd, VTT and Traficom) have conducted a background analysis and developed a detailed work plan.
Based on this work plan, we are presenting an Introduction to Optimum Quality of ITS (Feb 2019) for all interested parties, see the attachment:
– starting from a theoretical perspective on Optimum Quality,
– taking stock on existing knowledge and expertise in Europe, and
– formulating a methodology that will address the task goals in an efficient and practical way.
This document also includes the summary of a recent workshop (Cologne, October 8, 2018), where 4.1 partners and road authorities discussed relevant issues and potential approaches for Optimum Quality.
4.1. partners will inform regularly about the future progress and results of this interesting, but also challenging task. For questions or possible participation in workshops etc., please contact Peter Lubrich (BASt) as the Activity Leader.
05/02/2019
Leaders of the European ITS Platform were hosted in Milano to step forward in the European cooperation. Several subjects were discussed:
After the end of the meeting, some leaders remained in SINA to assist (in streaming) to a Parliament session. In fact the draft Delegate act on C-ITS was presented to the EU parliament – TRAN Commission on the same January 29th. The specifications set out in this Regulation lay down minimum requirements to achieve concrete implementation solutions for the interoperable deployment of Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) in the EU. It lays down how V2V, V2I and I2I communication is to be conducted by C-ITS stations and how C-ITS stations are to be placed on the market. Moreover, these provisions should apply to the entire road transport network, including interfaces with other transport modes relevant to road safety or traffic efficiency, such as rail crossings, port areas, etc.
For years, speeding has been recognised as one of the main contributing factors to deaths on our roads. Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) will have a huge impact on traffic safety. TN-ITS GO (Transport Network Intelligent Transport Systems) is a Connecting Europe Facility project that contributes to ISA’s success by deploying standardized advanced exchange and update mechanisms for digital map data. TN-ITS GO is planned to be a key part of the digital infrastructure of 15 European Member States and road operators by 2022. ISA’s planned introduction in all new cars sold is currently the subject of an EU proposed law.
Map data greatly contributes to ISA since safe driving speeds depends not just on legal speed limits, but also on other elements such as road topology and curvature, road and traffic conditions, and are often lower than the legal speed limit. Digital maps are able to reflect legal speeds on sections of the road network where implicit restrictions apply instead of sign-posted ones.
The TN-ITS platform was set-up in 2013 to facilitate and foster the pan-European harmonized exchange of modifications in road data between road authorities as trusted and quality data providers, and map makers and other parties as data users. TN-ITS-enabled map data guides the driver in an accurate way towards maintaining the legal speed.
TN-ITS services are already active in Finland, Norway and Sweden with a total data update rate of more than 1 million per year.
“I’m very encouraged by the progress made in the implementation of TN-ITS by the Member States, as well as by the recent release of the CEN Technical Standard. ISA is another important service application that can rely on the accurate map data assured by TN-ITS mechanisms. It is another step forward in making roads safer and saving lives”, says Stephen T’Siobbel, president of TN-ITS platform.
Road Authorities publish changes of road data as part of their Static Digital Infrastructure data maintenance. Mapmakers retrieve, verify and integrate these changes in their databases and bring this to map users. Drivers can benefit from up-to-date fresh map data that will enable ISA or will support driver/traveller information systems on any platform, including mobile devices.
TN-ITS with its focus on static map data, is compliant and coherent with other map data-related initiatives aimed at dynamic data information exchange, related to real time information with very short lifetimes.
On 10th January, the Transport Committee of the European Parliament voted to uphold the Commission’s proposal to introduce ISA on all new cars and trucks but the final say will rest with the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, which is scheduled to vote on the issue around mid-February.
Given the importance of saving lives on the road, the TN-ITS stakeholder platform encourages every Member State of Europe to join and implement this TN-ITS harmonized mechanism based upon the newly published European CEN Technical Specification (TS 17268).
For more information, visit https://www.tn-its.eu and https://tn-its.eu/tn-its-go
Jan 23, 2019
(TN-ITS GO is a project independent from the Platform. It is a follow-up of former SA4.7 of the European ITS Platform)
04/02/2019
In February 2018, the partners of the CROCODILE corridor have started to elaborate in detail the current status of supply and demand of cross-border traffic information exchange within corridor from Poland down to Slovenia. An initial workshop in Ostrava, Czech Republic, and subsequent coordination meetings were used to confirm certain assumptions, but have also revealed new aspects and viewpoints on the matching of supply and demand of cross-border traffic data.
The discussions revealed that certain sets of data are currently available from operator side. However there is no point in just pushing out all available static data, since not all of them are relevant to neighbouring motorway operators. The purpose of data exchange lies within the enhancement of end-user services, thereby improving the continuity of such services, which again contributes to realising the provisions coming from the ITS Directive.
This complies with the scope of CROCODILE to enhance end-user services through coordinated data exchange across borders. At the Ostrava workshop – and also subsequently – seven neighbouring Member States from the Central Europe area have been working to get a clear picture on what is available and what is demanded from consumer side (i.e. Traffic information Centres from neighbouring road operators). Thus each road operator represents a potential data provider as well consumer at the same time.
It is important to emphasise that “data exchange” in this context is not necessarily just a trade of getting data and providing data in return. Data provision – and their use by a neighbouring road operator – can be a reward in itself, if this leads to more efficiency in traffic in both operational areas. This means that often providers are happy to provide their data to partners as it allows for better reacting and (pre-)coordination of measures. So providing data will not certainly result in monetary revenue, but better informed neighbours might also benefit your own agenda in terms of better (cross-border) traffic coordination.
However a notable divergence in what both providers and consumers expect and what they really get has become apparent during the discussions. In order to align expectations along the CROCODILE corridor, each provider (one per country) created two sets of cards:
Delegates then held short country to country discussion, presenting their cards and clarifying, how they would match real demand. Regarding data being demanded, the process has revealed that there is:
Regarding data being provided, it has become apparent that:
There was common agreement on the fact that data exchange is more difficult for the consumer (being the TIC), since most of the processing has to be done on the consumer side and some tasks (e.g. decoding location of events) can be really challenging. This also illustrates why corridor-based efforts like CROCODILE are vital for driving coordination and improvement. The forum setting of the CROCODILE workshops have shown to be a crucial enabler for revealing, discussing and solving issues in cross-border traffic management.
29/01/2019
From detecting to signaling
The results of the first phase show that the tyre pressure measuring system is reliable enough to inform interested parties about the detected deficiencies. As a result, Rijkswaterstaat started the second phase of the pilot in December 2018. During this phase participating companies will get a message if a deficiency is observed in the tyre(s) of one of their vehicles. At the moment already 40 companies are participating with a total of 10.000 vehicles.
Here you can download the third newsletter about the pilot project.
23/01/2019
ΙΤS Hellas, the “Hellenic Association for the deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems”, organized its 4th Conference entitled: “Intelligent Transport Systems in Greece: Latest developments” on Tuesday 18 and Wednesday 19 December 2018 in the premises of the Hellenic Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport in Athens, Greece.
The main objective of this event, organised under the auspices of the Hellenic Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, the General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT), the Hellenic Confederation of Commerce and Entrepreneurship (ESEE), the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers (HITE) and the Hellenic Institute for Logistics Management (ΙLME) and the Greek Cold Storage and Logistics Association, was to discuss the broad deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) as a tool to achieve economic growth and prosperity and ensure the effectiveness, efficiency and safety of transport for the benefit of the respective industry, the end-users and the environment.
During this important for the Hellenic transport sector event, opened by the Greek Deputy Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Mr. Mavraganis, prominent Greek and foreign speakers thoroughly discussed and presented a number of key-topics, through several sessions and round table discussions:
The conference attracted great interest from the transport community, as can be realised by the high number of delegates attending (totaling 230, obligating the organizers to block further registrations one week before the original deadline). The speakers included representatives of the European Commission, ERTICO-ITS Europe, ASECAP, Greek road operators (e.g. Attiki Odos, Egnatia Odos) the industry (e.g. Renault, TomTom), port authorities and port services providers (e.g. valenciaport, Piraeus Container Terminals), the Transportation and Mobility Departments of municipalities in Greece, Research Institutes from Greece and other European countries, Universities, mobility consultants, as well as startups in the ITS field.
The European ITS Platform was invited by the organisers to deliver a presentation in the session „Intelligent Transportation Systems: Best practices at a European level“. The presentation of the platform entitled “Disseminating Operational Excellence: The European ITS Platform” contained an overall presentation of the objectives and tasks of EU EIP, with an added emphasis on the Deployment Guideline update process and specific results on the collection and dissemination of Best Practices collected all over Europe. The presentation concluded with a presentation of an example of the Best Practices collected in the course of the project. The remarkable achievements of the platform in the collection of Best Practices all over Europe were especially acclaimed by the delegates. In addition to the presentation, EU EIP took an active part in the discussions among the stakeholders that took place during the conference.
More information and the conference minutes will be published on the website of ITS Hellas.
16/01/2019
The European News Bulletin of Aiscat (issue November/December 2018) reports a 3 pages survey on ITS Forum 2018.
Since its establishment back in 1966, AISCAT (Associazione Italiana Società Concessionarie Autostrade e Trafori) has been active with collecting, comparing and presenting at a common table for exchange the experiences and needs of Italy’s toll motorway and tunnel operators.
The AISCAT monthly news bulletin (Bollettino AISCAT – Attualità dell’Unione europea) reports the main activities of the European Union in the road transport domain, together with relevant news and information about road sector in Europe and abroad. It has to be noted that these publications are issued only in Italian.
If you can read Italian, do not hesitate to download it, following this link.
