Eltis

The Finnish city of Tampere has started testing artificial intelligence (AI) and 'Internet of Things' technologies to improve pedestrian safety.

Working in partnership with Tieto, an IT services and software company, Tampere has developed a solution that can automatically detect when a pedestrian is planning to cross the street at an intersection. In order to protect the privacy of those being monitored, the solution is built in a way that prevents the identification of individual people or vehicles.

January 2020 will bring a significant change to many European inner-city streets. As of 1 January 2020, new urban vehicle access regulations (UVARs) are being introduced and many existing regulations are to be tightened in cities across Europe.

Cities affected by changes in January 2020 include;

Mobility practitioners in towns and cities are invited to join a series of sustainable mobility study visits organised by the CIVITAS Initiative in 2020.

These will take place in Madrid (Spain), Szeged (Hungary), Vinnytsia (Ukraine), Bratislava (Slovakia) and Utrecht (the Netherlands). As hosts of sustainable urban mobility study visits in 2020, these cities are offering participants the chance to discover their latest mobility innovations and the projects they are implementing to create clean, green and liveable urban environments.

A series of fact sheets chronicling good practice examples of measures, instruments and planning procedures related to Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) are now available to read.

The fact sheets give details of projects that have taken place in the seven partner cities of the CIVITAS SUMPs-Up project. Partner cities are Birmingham (UK), Budapest (Hungary), Donostia-San Sebastian (Spain), Malmö (Sweden), Sofia (Bulgaria), Thessaloniki (Greece) and Turin (Italy).

All towns in Spain with more than 50,000 inhabitants would have to set up low emission zones, if the plans of the largest party in Spain are put in place. While negotiations about a possible coalition are ongoing, the plans are timed to come into effect with the formal installation in power of the new government.

This year’s EUROPEANMOBILITYWEEK saw a record 1,028 MOBILITYACTIONs from businesses, schools, NGOs and other organisations across Europe.

Five of those have been nominated for the title of Best MOBILITYACTION 2019, and you can help to choose the winner. To win the competition, the nominee needs to get the highest number of points overall.

The nominees are:

1) Literary Competition on the Theme "Walk to the end of the city" (Bulgaria)

Polis has published a discussion paper on shared micromobility. The document, entitled "Macro managing micromobility", was launched on 27 November during the Annual Conference of Polis, a network of cities and regions working on transport innovation.

In the past few years, the number of cyclists in the Irish capital Dublin has been increasing steadily. Dublin City Council has been trialling the use of smart radar detectors to better count the number of cyclists in the city and to help cyclists travel more safely through the city. The initiative contributes to Dublin City Council’s objective of optimising traffic signals for all modes of transport.

From the start of 2020, the Spanish city of Barcelona and its adjacent municipalities, will ban the most polluting vehicles from their roads on weekdays between 7.00 and 20.00. This will affect around 50,000 cars and motorbikes whose owners would face heavy fines if they are caught using their vehicle on the area's roads.

A study carried out by Omio, a travel platform and app that allows users to book long-distance travel by train, bus or plane throughout the continent, has analysed the transport options chosen by users in Europe. The analysis was carried out at the main European destinations. Influencing factors include the distribution and prices of public transport tickets, such as tramways, buses, trains and the availability and prices of shared transport means, such as taxis, bicycles, e-scooters, and motorcycles.

Based on research which analysed the user group segmentation of cyclists, the project INSPIRe aims to develop and test gamification approaches to increase user motivation for cycling. The specific aim is to overcome possible “motivation killers” like hills or stop-and-go traffic situations.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), air pollution is currently one of the most significant and progressive risks to human health around the world.

In light of the rapid development of UVARs in the EU, an information tool is considered by the European parliament to be a useful instrument for citizens travelling within the EU.

Consequently, DG MOVE has announced a new preparatory action with the general objective to foster the real-time information of road users about urban and regional access schemes.

The specific objective of this tender is to:

At the closing plenary of the Polis Conference 2019, cities and regions expressed their support for