February 2012

Latest News from the Transport Research & Innovation Knowledge Centre

 

In this Issue:

News from the TRKC

We are happy to greet you this month of February which brought some colder temperatures and snow to many of us. We hope you are staying safe and warm.

Please find news from the EU and the transport research community at large below.

Thank you for reading.

The TRKC team

News from the EU Institutions

TRA 2012 Activity on LinkedIn

Check out the LinkedIn Group to see discussions about the conference and connect to group members and visit the LinkedIn Event to see who will be attending.

TRA 2012 is also active on Twitter and Facebook.

Innovation and Research in Europe’s Railways

Siim Kallas, Vice-President and Commissioner for Transport, highlighted the importance of innovation and research in Europe’s railways in a speech given at the European Railways Awards ceremony in Brussels on 8 February. Vice-President Kallas also expressed that the Commission will create proposals later this year to help provide additional incentive for creating a single rail area and for making improvements to the EU rail sector.

 ‘We need more innovation, new ideas and a great deal more private investment in the market if rail is to achieve its full potential.

And also more research: into areas such as locomotive construction, brake design and technology, signalling, energy efficiency – just to name a few. These should increase capacity, reliability and reduce environmental impacts...

I am not pretending that we have all the solutions today. We will listen to all ideas from all parties as the months progress.

We do, however, recognise that railways are a network. But we need the innovation and efficiency that only a proper opening of rail markets, services and infrastructure can deliver.'

Read the entire speech here

TEN-T Info Day held on 31 January – Recording Available

Priorities for the EUR 200 million available in the 2011 TEN-T Annual Call were presented in Brussels, to over 400 stakeholders who attended the event. The priorities and their allocated budget include:

  • Development of an integrated and multi-modal transport system (EUR 25 million)
  • Infrastructure development contributing to the mitigation and adaptation to climate change and the reduction of the impact on the environment (EUR 35 million)
  • Implementation of TEN-T projects (EUR 100 million)
  • Support of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and innovative financial instruments (EUR 15 million)
  • Support of the long term implementation of the TEN-T network (EUR 25 million)

The event was available in web streaming and a recording with slides is available online. The deadline for submission of proposals is 13 April, 2012.

Find more information on the 2011 TEN-T Annual Call.

The CIVITAS Initiative at TRB 2012

For the first time since the official launch of the CIVITAS Initiative in 2002, CIVITAS members attended and presented their experiences at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) 91st Annual Meeting, which was held in Washington, D.C. on 22-26 January. The event, which attracted more than 11,000 transportation professionals from around the world (with attendees representing policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, industry, and academic institutions), offered CIVITAS the opportunity to illustrate to a wide audience the mission, achievements, and the evolution of one of the flagship initiatives of the European Commission.

With a representative team composed of Vincent Leiner (European Commission, DG MOVE), Mario Gualdi (CIVITAS CATALIST, coordinator, ISIS), Marie Launay (CIVINET, coordinator, Euro Project Consult), and Pascal Van den Noort (CIVITAS MIMOSA, Velo Mondial), CIVITAS met with the Transportation and Sustainability Committee presenting ‘Promoting Sustainable Mobility in Urban Areas’, and with the Regional Transportation Systems Management and Operations Committee presenting ‘The CIVITAS Initiative’. The latter Committee received the CIVITAS delegation at their executive meeting to discuss a possible way forward in the cooperation between TRB and CIVITAS. In the months to come further communication will be exchanged in order to identify concrete opportunities for knowledge exchange and more concrete forms of joint activities.

Further information on the TRB 2012 conference is available online.

News from the Transport Research Community

40th ETC Conference Themes

The 40th European Transport Conference (ETC) will be held on 8-10 October, 2012 in Glasgow, Scotland. The themes of the conference, which plays the role of interface between research, policy and practice, have already been selected and include:

  • Low emission vehicles
  • Long-distance movement of goods and people
  • Changes in travel behavior during changing economic times
  • Climate change and extreme weather conditions
  • How to minimize social exclusion during economic hardship
  • Transport planning and the rise of social media
  • Bus Rapid Transit and Personal Rapid Transit
  • New approaches and applications in modeling
  • City logistics and e-shopping
  • Reduced transport infrastructure funding as an opportunity for lower-cost and environmentally friendly projects
  • Leisure and tourism in an economic downturn
  • The Decade of Action for Road Safety

Beyond that, the Conference programme covers supranational issues, national and local policy, and the implementation of projects at a local level.

More information about the conference can be found here.

TRB’s IDEA Programme Now Accepting Funding Proposals

TRB’s Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Programme provides funding for ideas in surface transportation which demonstrate innovation, benefits, and science, and which would otherwise be unlikely to be funded through traditional means. TRB is accepting funding proposals in the following areas:

  • NCHRP Highway IDEA proposals - due 1 March, 2012
  • Safety IDEA proposals - due 1 April, 2012
  • Transit IDEA proposals - due 1 May, 2012

For more information, view the 2012 IDEA Announcement.

2012 ERRAC Plenary – 21 March 2012 in Brussels

The next ERRAC Plenary meeting will be held in Brussels on 21 March. Registration is requested by 7 March, by sending an email to ERRAC@cer.be

Annual Summit of the International Transport Forum, 2-4 May 2012

The Annual Summit of the International Transport Forum will be held on 2-4 May in Leipzig, Germany. Decision makers from more than 50 countries engage at this summit, representing industry, civil society and research communities. This year’s summit is on ‘Seamless Transport: Making Connections’ and will consider how we can improve the way people and goods move, both globally and locally.

Click here for more information

Investing in European Railways – ‘Are the funds really there?’

The Danish Presidency and CER have invited personalities from the EU institutions and the rail sector to illustrate their expectations on the financing of transport infrastructure over the forthcoming decades in Europe and to stimulate discussion on what the future paths should be. The event will take place in Bibliothèque Solvay, Bruxelles on 8 May, 18:30 – 20:30.

Register by sending an e-mail to events@cer.be

60th World Congress and Mobility & City Transport Exhibition – Call for Papers

The 60th World Congress and Mobility & City Transport Exhibition will be held 26-30 May in Geneva, and proposals for papers are being accepted through 30 March. This year's edition, under the heading, ‘i-MOVE 2.0, The Business model for tomorrow?’, will feature 6 main topics:

  • Service design and portfolio
  • Strategic management and integrated business processes
  • Funding model
  • Governance and industry structures
  • Smart city and mobility management
  • The Tools of Mobility 2.0

Details are available here.

THE TRKC CONSORTIUM

 

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MORE UPDATES

New project profiles

See the latest project profiles available in our searchable database. There are about 425 projects from FP6 available, over 200 from FP7, and more than 6500 European and national projects in total. New descriptions and result summaries are being added continually.

New transport events

Find out what is going on in the world of transport research through the TRKC events calendar. New event announcements are published regularly.

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You can use our Word form and send it to helpdesk@transport-research.info or upload project information directly via our secure extranet.

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