Source: Faber Maunsell

The current version of the EasyWay ITS Roadmap will be presented and discussed at a workshop to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark on 17 September 2008. The aim of the workshop is to establish an agreement on a final proposal for European ITS Services that shall be deployed through EasyWay activities in future years.

The EasyWay ITS road map is a strategic plan that falls within the activities set out by the European ITS Action Plan (also under development) by the European Commission.  These documents will outline the range of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) projects that will take place within EasyWay and the rest of Europe over the next seven years.

The information included in the EasyWay road map is the result of collective input from various road operators, authorities, transport service providers, vehicle manufacturers and other stakeholders in the transportation industry. The information collated and presented by a special European study task force within EasyWay covers a wide range of transport projects and policy needs which will feed into a strategy for delivering ITS services in the future.

The nature of this map is such that it will make it much easier to identify areas where there is little or no progression in the take up of ITS initiatives. The ITS road map will provide more transparency so that any region in need of speedy development can receive more focussed attention as well as support from the EU. Such a region will also benefit from the expertise from the other regions that are performing well and have more experience in the project area concerned.

In addition to performance reporting and monitoring with the use of the Road map, ITS services will be deployed to bring all regions up to the appropriate level of service as directed by the road map.

The map has been broken down into service groups which will address and serve a specific country/user ‘need’. The ranges of services include:

o        Candidate services which will provide a direct service to the ‘end user’. Some example services are Multimodal travel planning, on-trip traffic information, access to incident management, truck parking and road user charging.

o        Supporting Action (services) that will address harmonisation and development of ITS infrastructure with an end vision to supply/support the services provided to the end user.

Some examples of the supporting activities are VMS harmonisation, remote freight information, road network definition and data exchange and management.

These services will be employed with a direct aim to fulfil one or more of the objectives set out by the Commission. These objectives include:

o        Reducing congestion and making optimum use of current capacity;

o        Increase traffic safety;

o        Addressing the negative impact on society while increasing efficiency and reducing dependency on fossil fuels; and

o        Contributing to the success of the economy.

Essentially the EasyWay ITS road map is being developed to guide the participating EasyWay partners on the deployment of ITS services in Europe. More importantly this plan will ensure that there is a co-ordinated approach to implementation across the different countries in Europe and also to encourage the take up of good quality research projects.

To register for the event send your details (name, affiliation etc) to: Christian.udin@sweco.se .

ITS Radar International will monitor the outcome

Keywords: Environment, European Commission, Freight, Policy, Project, Traffic centre, Traffic information, Traffic management, Safety