Transport Research and Innovation Portal

5 Feb 2013: 

For the second consecutive year CIVITAS presented some of its achievements at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), which took place in Washington D.C. from 13 to 17 January 2013.
On top of various high level meetings with a host of TRB Committees geared towards enhanced cross-Atlantic cooperation, CIVITAS co-organised two headline events:

• A session on the unveiling of two cycling books: City Cycling, a MIT Press publication, and Enabling Cycling Cities , a CIVITAS MIMOSA publication. The event was organised in partnership with MIT Press and the League of American Bicyclists (Sponsoring Committee: Bicycle Transportation). The programme highlighted the authors of new U.S. and EU publications on city cycling, in view of an exchange of ideas between academics, practitioners and advocates attending the TRB Annual Meeting. The exchange of ideas was reported back to the TRB Committee on Bicycle Transportation, highlighting potential areas of collaboration between the EU and U.S. research communities.
  
  
• A session on 'Transforming Urban Mobility Takes Innovation of All Kinds‘ (Sponsoring Committee: Planning and Environment Group), organised in partnership with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This was a lively session featuring stories about innovations in sustainable urban mobility. Multiple speakers from around the world selected shared stories that encompass a range of issues in urban mobility from a call for proposals. Presenters showcased an urban innovation by identifying the problem they innovated for, how problems were overcome, and the outcomes of their project. The presentations were conducted in pecha kucha style to best focus on the key inflection points in the story and to ensure that they conveyed the main ideas and retain audience attention. CIVITAS presented stories on the EC urban mobility vision, on how CIVITAS succeeds in transferring knowledge, on the mobility innovations adopted by the city of Perugia, on the CIVITAS MIMOSA book Enabling Cycling Cities: ingredients for success and on innovative car sharing in the city of Bremen.

5 Feb 2013: 

The TRB Annual Meeting took place from 13 to 17 January in Washington D.C. The programme covered all transportation modes, addressing the spotlight theme for 2013 Deploying Transportation Research - Doing Things Smarter, Better, Faster. More than 4.000 presentations were made in around 40 sessions and workshops. Attendees included policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions.
The Visual Aid Presentations will be available in mid-March.
More information can be found on the TRB website.

5 Feb 2013: 

The best European projects in the area of energy efficiency, renewable energy sources and clean transport are invited to participate in the 2013 edition of the ManagEnergy Local Energy Action Award Competition.
The main objective of the award is to acknowledge cases of good practice which have taken place during 2012 for their significant contribution to the promotion of energy efficiency and or renewable energy use and for their strong potential for replication.
Managed by the Executive Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation (EACI) on behalf of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Energy, the Sustainable Energy Europe (SEE) Awards and the ManagEnergy Local Energy Action Award are complementary competitions sharing the same ultimate goal: to provide institutional recognition and increased visibility to best-in-class sustainable energy initiatives. For the first time, the two Awards will share a common application procedure.
Deadline for submission is 8 March 2013.
More information is available at ManagEnergy website.

5 Feb 2013: 

The Irish Presidency presented their priorities for the transport agenda, to promote a safer, more efficient and sustainable transport network for Europe. The Presidency will act as a facilitator to achieve agreement on some key dossiers in the transport sector, including:
• The Connecting Europe Facility, to determine targeted investment addressing bottlenecks and missing links in transport infrastructures.
• The Trans-European Networks – Transport (TEN-T), to finalise the set of guidelines and requirements for the development of the European Transport network over the next four decades to 2050.
• The Fourth Rail Package, to promote a more competitive and modern public transport infrastructure across the EU, offering consumers and business greater choice and more cost-effective options.
• The Airports Package, to address issues of efficiency, quality and capacity across European airports.
The Presidency also aims at securing agreement on proposals to enforce the Maritime Labour Convention and a new Tachograph Regulation (a device used to record hauliers' driving hours), and to make good progress on other important dossiers impacting on the transport sector. These include proposed new legislation under the Clean Power for Transport initiative and a number of safety related proposals in the Road Worthiness Package and the Passenger Ship Safety programme.
Two other transport-related dossiers are expected to be published and presented during Ireland 's Presidency: the next phase of the Single European Sky initiative and a Blue Belt Initiative aimed at reducing administrative burdens for short sea shipping within the EU.

5 Feb 2013: 

The European Commission has launched an online public consultation on ‘Enablers for European multimodal travel planning and information services'. The consultation takes stock of the results of the first Smart Mobility Challenge (TRIP Newsletter March 2102) and follows up on the work in the domain of multimodal journey planning and information services carried out under the ITS Action Plan (Action 1.5 Promotion of multimodal journey planners) and ITS Directive (priority action (a) provision of EU-wide multimodal information).

Those with an interest in the matter are invited to fill out a short, mainly multiple-choice questionnaire before 12 March 2013 at: Online questionnaire.

For more information, please visit the consultation page.

5 Feb 2013: 

The European Commission has published the first part of a new FP7 call for proposals for Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU 2013 part 1).

The call has a budget of € 68.5 million and consists of 27 topics under five areas of research:
• transportation and refuelling infrastructure;
• hydrogen production and distribution;
• stationary power generation and CHP;
• early markets; and cross-cutting issues such as social acceptance, education, performance test schemes, and
• guarantees of origin.
Successful applicants are expected to complete their projects by June 2017.

To view the call and related document, please consult the Participant portal.

5 Feb 2013: 

The Transport Research Summary, on Transport Management has been released and is available on the TRIP website. This is part of the series of 24 thematic publications that the TRIP Team is producing on the corresponding research themes of the site. Thematic Research Summaries provide a structured guide to the results of research projects carried out at mainly EU level, either as part of a framework programme or as a study commissioned by the European Commission.
To view the publication click here.