Oct 30, 2019
The range of topics of this year's congress, which attracted more than 14,000 participants and 850 speakers, was enormously broad. Following the motto "Smart Mobility, Empowering Cities", ten major topics such as multimodal freight transport, data, cybersecurity and road safety were gathered together. There were five days full of sessions, demonstrations and discussions of all kinds. The focus was clearly on current challenges and new approaches to mobility solutions.
Austria was represented by a joint booth, sponsored by the WKO. Besides AustriaTech and ITS Austria the exhibitors were the Federal Agency of Transport, Innovation and Technology, AVL, ATTC with the partners EBE, Signon and Andata as well as Doppelmayr Seilbahnen, Swarco, ASFINAG, ITS Vienna Region and Upstream Mobility.
Strongly presented was the topic intelligent, connected, autonomous vehicles. The focus was on technical challenges and – much more than in previous years – the use of artificial intelligence. The use of automated vehicles is increasing. However, there is still no agreement when automated vehicles will be registered on public roads. A critical point, which was a main topic of the congress as well, is traffic safety.
The different approaches to Mobility as a Service were also exciting. International regulations and uniform definitions were clearly required here.
The C-ITS Deployment Group was able to present a great success: with a total of 52 partners, the C-ITS deployment is starting in Europe. A joint statement was handed over to EU Commissioner Victoria Bulc.
"Singapore has shown that the interest in this topic in the community is incredibly high and that gives us the opportunity to really get C-ITS on the road!", said Peter Meckel (ASFINAG).
Managing Director Martin Russ interprets the motto of this year's congress as follows:
"In the end, it's about looking behind the technology. What can ITS do? What do smart mobility solutions enable? What is possible, above all, in the direction of sensible control, sensible analysis with regard to the question of what is happening in our road network? This leads to the consideration of how we can control, direct and orchestrate mobility in cities in the future. We should bear in mind that we will have fierce conflicts if we want to implement our objectives in cities with regard to environmentally friendly, affordable mobility."
The experimental approach of ITS Atoms allows the representation of urban as well as regional mobility solutions. The basic idea of the context-mapping-game is showing new ideas and the underlying processes and make them visible. A decisive point is not only the playful visualization, but also the possibility to work out the solutions in dialogue.
"We were able to open a door that we hadn't expected with our ITS Atoms approach. The ability to use a gamefication approach to construct and depict things was very well received. The use can be imagined on different levels – far beyond the original idea." - Walter Schneider, Business-Unit Leader Mobility Innovation
With regard to new mobility solutions, they are among the leaders: the ITS Challenge winners Carployee, Easymobil and Ummadum. They were selected from a total of 55 submissions for the National Mobility Award 2019 and were able to present their solutions in Singapore.
All of them are characterised by an innovative, integrative and service-oriented concept in the field of Intelligent Transport Systems. With its carpooling approach, Carployee aims to promote the exchange of employees and simultaneously reduce CO2 emissions. The employees of a company can offer journeys via app or book carpooling opportunities. The easymobil station of Wiener Lokalbahnen is a concept for the integration of various mobility services. The stops will be extended by services such as bike sharing, bike service stations, e-charging stations or collection boxes from the local supermarket. The concept behind Ummadum, which was specially developed for rural areas, combines trade with mobility, or more precisely Car-Sharing. Via the app you can share journeys or search for carpooling opportunities. The currency is a points system. The collected points can be redeemed later in the trade.
