Photo: ITS-Congresses
Finland declared open for ITS experiments
19 June 2014
by Richard Forster
The Finnish Minister of Transport and Local Government, Henna Virkkunen, opened the 10th ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) European Conference by declaring Finland a ‘traffic lab’ and open to companies willing to experiment.
In welcoming the more than 2,500 participants, including 47 exhibitors, Virkkunen outlined the reasons for why Finland will be a ‘traffic lab’.
“The Finnish Ministry of Transport and Local Government has launched a Traffic Lab initiative in order to develop the transport service market,” she said. “It is an experiment, a way to learn how the authorities and the private sector together could provide their services using commercial platforms.”
Virkkunen outlined three mega trends that are affecting conventions in mobility and transport, including the rising use of automation and robotics, the growing amount of information and its utilisation and the transformation of mobility into a service.
“People want real-time information about traffic and about their options in changing modes of transport,” she added. “This higher level of expectation should be achieved with transport services–the customer is king, also in this sector. We believe that transport in the future will be a service–indeed, Mobility as a Service.”
To back this up, later during a Ministerial Round Table, a statement was released by Virkkunen and Siim Kallas, the European Commission Vice-President responsible for transport that outlined a more user-orientated transport policy.
The joint statement emphasised the aim to develop the transport sector into an ecosystem based on close cooperation between different actors, including public-private-people partnerships and in utilisation of information. This includes transport infrastructure and services as well as information, ICT and payment services in transport.
Although outlining an ambitious new European Commission ITS directive that the Commission is working on, Kallas was adamant that real action must be taken by the private sector.
“All this wonderful new integrated and ‘smart’ transport world must be ‘done’ by somebody,” he said. “That ‘somebody’ has to be companies, whether an established multinational or a small university start-up. That’s where the imagination and driving innovation has to come from. It is not for the European Commission to provide solutions and services.”
Highlighting this important link between public-private and ‘people’ partnerships the congress awarded its first recipients of the ‘ITS in your pocket’ App contest. Split into three categories the winners included a cycling app, PleaseCycle (UK), in the category of urban mobility, Calendar 24 (Netherlands), for multimodal transport, and Ajelo (Finland) which won for ‘out-of-the-box’ innovation category.
A special AppCampus grant of €20,000 was awarded to OTRIP (France) for ‘putting shared journeys at the forefront of the user experience ultimately changing how people plan and travel with friends’.
The Deputy Mayor of Bordeaux, Nathalie Delattre, announced that the app competition would continue and be awarded at the 11th ITS Congress which she will host next year.
“On behalf of Bordeaux Aquitaine local authorities, I warmly invite you to visit us for the next 2015 ITS World Congress in Bordeaux from 5 to 9 October 2015. You will discover and enjoy a smart place for a smart mobility!” she said.
The 10th ITS European Congress was organised by ERTICO – ITS Europe and the European Commission and was hosted by ITS Finland, the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications and the City of Helsinki.
