Through the leadership of Östergötland in the AER Working Group on Transports and Mobility, AER is involved in the New Mobility Services Initiative, of the European Commission. This initiative was set up within the Sustainable Urban Mobility Action Cluster of the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC).

Bringing stakeholders together for smarter mobility

The European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities brings together cities, industries, SMEs, investors, researchers and other smart city actors to accelerate innovation and cooperation. The New Mobility Services initiative is a market-changing undertaking supported by the European Commission which brings cities and regions together with other stakeholders to show-case innovative mobility solutions and support their replications.

Shaping the infrastructures of tomorrow

The New Mobility Services initiative was launched to help better integrate and manage urban transport, contributing to the development of collective systems for seamless multi-modal mobility, and create an open and collaborative marketplace for new mobility services in Europe.  The New Mobility Services is establishing strategic partnerships between industry, European cities and regions. As a result cooperation is développante between private and public partners including companies, NGOs, research centers & universities, and policymakers. These cooperations aim to shape the urban systems and infrastructures of tomorrow.

Leading the work of the Working Group on Transports and Mobility

The AER working group on Transports and Mobility, which is chaired by Martin Tollén, member of the Transport and Urban Planning Committee of Östergötland (SE), meets regularly to exchange experiences on innovative technologies, public transports systems and new mobilities.

Recent activities included:

• Breakfast Debate on Urban Mobility, led by Philipp Rode, Director of LSE Cities and joint Research Director of the “Towards New Urban Mobility” paper
• Workshop on the digitalisation of transports & information about the European Strategy on Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS), a milestone on the path towards cooperative, connected and automated mobility (COM(2016) 766)
• Cooperation with Revolve Media to highlight regional good practices in the field of transport and provide visibility to active AER members
• Contribution on new mobilities & artificial intelligence at the AER event on Nov 30th “Artificial Intelligence: are regions up to the challenge?”
• Working Group meeting on cross-border mobility, transport corridors and the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities

Martin Tollén participates in the activities of the New Mobility Services initiative of the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities on behalf of AER. Members of the Working Group, receive regular updates on developments and opportunities at meetings.

Engaging diverse regional stakeholders

In the context of his engagement in the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities, Martin Tollén met the local and regional representatives of Region Östergötland to discuss the engagement of the region’s stakeholders in the New Mobility Services group. This meeting led to the involvement of more experts and stakeholders from the region in the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities.

Representatives of Östergötland participated in two partner meetings of the New Mobility Services in February and June 2018.
In June 2018 Region Östergötland had a follow-up meeting with the New Mobility Services’ coordinator of the working group on Parking solutions. Östergötland also invited two of its major municipalities Linköping and Norrköping to this meetings as well as the public transport company Östgötatrafiken.

Examples of working points

On the occasion of the New Mobility Services General Assembly in Sofia the Region Östergötland provided some inputs to what kind of challenges its region is going to foresee at the local level. This meeting is an opportunity for smart city actors to exchange best practices, present projects, find partners, and stimulate discussions helping the development of innovative ideas.
The main points which were pointed out were:

• Enable usage of open data and find new ways of using open data in public transport to improve and simplify the travelling for passengers;
• Combine mobility solutions with the ambition of taking market shares from cars and increase the users of the public transport company (Östgötatrafiken);
• Develop new payment methods by external suppliers and use it in the public transport company;
• Pilot projects with linkages to the car sharing company in Östergötland to improve the parking solutions offered by transport companies in the public sector.

As an outcome of the meeting the municipalities of Östergötland and the public transport company Östgötatrafiken are interested in being engaged in New Mobility Services initiatives. They are also ready to use their cities as testbeds for future projects.

Östergötland Region underlined the fruitful partnership is holding with the New Mobility Services. This partnership is an opportunity to act in a concrete manner what concerns mobility.

Presentation

It is possible to find synthesised all the main points about the New Mobility Services presented in the occasion of the General Assembly in Sofia (Bulgaria) the 27 June 2018. 

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Photo credits: Joey Kyber on Unsplash