The most important event in the European traffic management calendar got underway yesterday (June 6) as the 11th ITS European Congress opened at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) (above).
At the opening ceremony, key industry figures delivered speeches which focused on this year’s Congress theme “Delivering future cities now”. They focused on the need for increased connectivity to bring new services to users and improve communication in a sustainable way.
“It is a very exciting time for ITS and under this year’s Congress there are three major trends revolutionising mobility in our cities: Cooperative ITS, Urban freight and Mobility as a Service”, Cees De Wijs, chair of ERTICO ITS Europe Supervisory Board, stated in his opening speech. “We will not only see that these trends will gain in momentum over the upcoming years but that they will converge. This convergence will be driven by connectivity and data exchange which will break down the existing silo thinking in the mobility industry”, he continued.
Among the other speakers at the opening ceremony were Violeta Bulc, EU Commissioner for Transport and John Parkinson, director of motoring, freight and London, Department for Transport, UK
The ribbon-cutting ceremony was followed by the Best Paper Awards. Best Technical Paper went to The Netherlands’ Igor Passchier of Tass International for his submission Dutch C-ITS Reference Architecture. While Best Scientific Paper, went to Paula Syrjärinne, of the University of Tampere, Finland, for her paper Incident Detection Based on Bus Data.
Following the awards the first plenary session on connected and automated vehicles go underway, with the participation of Magda Kopczynska (director, innovative and sustainable mobility, DG MOVE), Jacob Bansgaard (director general, FIA), Morten Kabell (mayor of technical and environmental affairs, City of Copenhagen), and Erik Jonnaert (secretary general, ACEA).
In the next three days, over 500 speakers will discuss latest topics and trends, present services and mobility solutions, and highlight policies and needs to a large scale deployment of ITS.
