Transport Research and Innovation Portal

Background & policy context

Migration from rural to urban centres, changing lifestyles, and increasing motorisation rates are among the many factors that have contributed to congestion, pollution and noise, and to reduced efficiency of the transport systems in our cities. Over the last few years, scientists, transport operators, the industry and policy-makers have developed a wide range of innovative concepts to make urban transport more efficient, competitive and sustainable. Despite significant progress, a number of barriers have prevented the large scale implementation of these innovative concepts.

The mission of the project NICHES is to stimulate a wide debate on innovative urban transport and mobility between relevant stakeholders from different sectors and disciplines across Europe.

Objectives

The high-level goal of the NICHES project was to support the development and adoption of innovative technology and policy-based urban transport concepts that would contribute to establishing sustainable urban transport systems. This in turn was expected to contribute significantly to a more efficient and competitive transport system, a healthier environment and improved quality of life in urban areas.

This high-level project goal was translated into five overall project objectives:

1. to enhance discussion and knowledge exchange between practitioners, experts and researchers in the field of urban transport in Europe, ensuring that different sectors would be involved (transport authorities, operators, industry, academics, and other researchers as well as users);
2. to provide a forum for those involved in European research activities and projects as well as national, local and industrial initiatives in the area of innovative urban transport concepts to share their knowledge and experience;
3. to develop an accessible document store and a knowledge-base on innovative transport concepts as well as integrated urban transport strategies, in which several innovative concepts are implemented in a combined way;
4. to identify future research needs and pave the way for innovative transport concepts, meeting mobility needs in 2020;
5. to develop a platform for capacity building (tools and content) for practitioners with guidance on developing and implementing innovative concepts in the framework of integrated urban transport strategies.

Methodology

NICHES provided coordination for a wide range of innovative urban transport concepts through a combined programme of stakeholder involvement via targeted in-depth interviews, expert working groups (adopting a successful, previously adopted focus group approach), and validation and dissemination workshops, accompanied by desk research and good practice in the field of urban transport.

The NICHES work process was oriented at gradually broadening the impacts of relevant innovative urban transport concepts. It was structured in four steps, accompanied by four Working Group (WG) meetings, plus the parallel dissemination and exploitation of results. Each step involved the experts invited for the WG meetings, as well as the selected interview partners, participants from other ongoing R&D activities and the NICHES Advisory Committee. These four steps were:

1. Establish the State-of-the-Art;
2. Assess success factors, barriers and transferability of innovative concepts;
3. Integrate innovative concepts into coherent transport strategies;
4. Research and policy recommendations.

The thematic areas of the four working groups defined by the consortium were:

1. New forms of seamless mobility services;
2. Innovative approaches in city logistics;
3. New Non-Polluting and Energy-Efficient Vehicles;
4. Innovative Demand Management Strategies.

Research Programme

FP6-SUSTDEV-2 - Sustainable Surface Transport

Leading institution(s)

Public institution:

European Commission

Type of funding

Public (EU)

Key results

This project facilitated the coordination of research activities of academic institutions, industry, mobility operators and transport authorities in the area of innovative urban transport concepts. It also helped to identify and disseminate excellent, transferable examples of innovative transport measures in the most crucial areas of urban transport.

The main achievements reached by the project are as follows.

1) Establish the State-of-the-Art

The main achievement was the development of the document 'State-of-the-Art in Developing Innovative Transport Concepts in Europe', which provides an overview of this topic, and defines, describes and analyses the 12 selected NICHES innovative concepts and examples of their successful implementation in cities across Europe. These innovative concepts, which the other steps focused on, are:

• Urban Lift-sharing Services;
• Space Management for Urban Delivery;
• Policy Strategies for Clean Vehicles;
• Transportation Management Associations (TMAs);
• Public Bicycles;
• Inner-city Night Delivery;
• Biogas in Captive Fleets;
• Local Taxes or Charges, Ring-fenced for Transport;
• Call-a-bus Services;
• Alternative Solutions for Home Delivery;
• Joint Procurement of Clean Vehicles;
• City-wide Campaigns.

More specifically, the document included:

• precise definitions for all selected concepts and description of different approaches that they embrace;
• an explanation of the selection process for concepts by providing arguments that clarify why a concept suits the NICHES approach;
• descriptions of both the context of the four thematic areas (see the section 'Methodology') and the selected concepts by identifying macro trends, driving forces as well as barriers and problems;
• a brief description of examples chosen as representative of the concept;
• a first snapshot of synergies and integrative potential within and between thematic areas and concepts.

2) Assess success factors, barriers and transferability of innovative concepts

The main achievements were:

• the identification and involvement of key actors that implemented the selected innovative concepts in different forms and places, who provided crucial input to the project;
• the production of the report 'Success factors and transferability of innovative urban transport concepts', which provides detailed information on the implementation of the selected innovative concepts, as well as conclusions regarding relevant success factors and barriers for the implementation and transferability to other urban contexts.

3) Integrate innovative concepts into coherent transport strategies

The main outcomes were

• the identification of 11 integrated strategies combining the innovative concepts and measures to achieve specific objectives of urban transport and mobility policies;
• the publication of the 'Guide to Innovative Urban Transport Strategies', which illustrates how developing innovative conceptscan be fit into integrated strategies for urban transport.

The guide represents a valid support for urban transport decision makers and practitioners to find innovations that could be applied in their cities, by providing a description of the combinations of NICHES concepts and measures to develop integrated urban transport strategies.

4) Research and policy recommendations

The main achievements are the following.

• The identification of research gaps for urban transport innovation.
• The formulation of research and policy recommendations for the different stakeholders (researchers, decision makers, public transport operators…) at local, national and European level.
• The identification of the mobility trends and visions on urban mobility (this analysis is the subject of the working document 'Mobility trends and visions').
• The publication of the document 'Facilitating urban transport innovation on the European level - Research and policy recommendations', which is particularly targeted to EU level decision makers and the European research community in the field of urban transport and includes key research recommendations addressing research topics, perspectives and formats as well as policy recommendations.
• The publication of the report 'Local policy recommendations for sustainable urban transport', which supports local decision makers to stimulate innovative transport and mobility solutions in their cities and regions. Policy recommendations are proposed, which focus on what should be put forward on local agendas to facilitate the uptake of NICHES Concepts and to enhance the development and implementation of local transport innovations.
• The publication of 12 Policy notes dedicated to each of the 12 NICHES innovative concepts, where the costs and benefits, the stakeholders to be involved, the users to whom the initiative should be addressed, and the key steps for implementation are described.

Technical implications

• Before performing new research it is advisable to consider the existing results. It is strongly recommended to enhance activities to foster the use of existing research results, because it can help to avoid repetitive work and permits to use existing knowledge as a valuable basis to build on.
• Improve assessment methodologies and create practical decision support tools. In spite all the progress made concerning knowledge about the impact of measures to tackle urban transport problems, adequate decision support tools are still lacking.
• Strengthen research on connections between urban transport measures and urban development and land use planning.
• Assess and analyse adverse and unforeseen effects. Measures in urban transport that seem promising are often implemented without adequately assessing and analysing possible adverse effects.
• The understanding of change management is still lacking. Research should address this topic to a higher degree and try to understand the key drivers (and barriers) for change.
• Improve the understanding of the impact of demographic change on urban transport. Low birth rates and increasing life expectancy will result in new mobility patterns and demand for adequate and tailor-made mobility or delivery services.
• Give non-motorised transport an appropriate status in research activities. Walking and cycling play a significant role in urban transport and have unexploited potential to contribute to more sustainable transport patterns.
• Strengthen research on urban freight innovation. More dedicated research is required to better understand patterns of urban freight traffic, as well as research on technical solutions to facilitate innovation.
• Better consider the full spectrum of alternative fuels and market uptake. Some NICHES experts stated that research is generally too much focussing on hydrogen, which will not play a significant role in transport for a long time, if ever. Ethanol, biogas and biomass-to-liquid/gas (BTL/G) are alternatives that need further research and development to exploit the unexplored potential to increase energy efficiency and economic viability in the production and to decrease emissions from the vehicles.
• Profile the mobility culture and enhance understanding of mobility behaviour. Despite their crucial importance, behavioural aspects of transport and mobility are underestimated in a rather technology-oriented research arena.
• Foster interdisciplinary approaches. To effectively tackle complex problems, a better collaboration of a wide range of different disciplines and cross-sectoral thinking are needed.
• Strengthen inter-sectoral perspectives. Bringing together diverse stakeholders can amplify the view on the research topic and contribute to better outcomes.
• Balance research perspectives and include all relevant disciplines. Many disciplines that have a large potential to contribute to research activities in the field of urban transport are not well represented. NICHES experts particularly highlighted the need for a stronger involvement of social and behavioural psychology, economy, law, political and planning science and health science.
• Set urban transport research in its Make research and knowledge better regional context. Currently, research too often only focus on the urban core city does not take into account the manifold interrelations with the surrounding regions.
• Better target local authorities as end users of research results.
• Run more 'practical experiments'. Applied science and practical demonstrations of urban transport innovation should be strengthened. “Practical experiments” can also contribute to a better uptake and testing of theoretical research results.
• Make research and knowledge better accessible via training. The transfer of knowledge in many fields which are relevant for urban transport is still poorly developed. Many valuable results from European research projects are not communicated in an appropriate way to stakeholders who are in charge of practical application. Training programmes funded on the European level could be an effective tool to spread knowledge and encourage practical uptake.
• Foster exchange of experience. The exchange of experiences between different research projects, institutions and concerned stakeholders is frequently still weak and should be stimulated further from the EU side.
• Encourage integration and partnerships.
• Simplify administrative and payment procedures in EU projects.

Policy implications

Different urban transport experts during the NICHES working group meetings have elaborated the following policy recommendations addressed to EU policy makers.

• Provide clear EU-wide definitions of sustainable urban transport and clean vehicles.
• Strengthen the status of soft measures in EU policies. Soft measures have proven to be cost-efficient and effective tools to tackle urban transport problems. Nevertheless they often seem to be neglected in discussions about the future direction of EU policies in the field of urban transport.
• Encourage development of Sustainable Urban Transport Plans (SUTP).
• Foster EU-wide promotion of and training on sustainable urban transport.
• Continue support for EU-wide networking activities. A continued and stable support for thematic networks with a long-term perspective is recommended as efficient way to promote the exchange of experiences.
• Provide practical guidance on implementation. The EC should take a stronger role in providing practical guidance on implementing promising urban transport measures. This could be achieved by providing more project funding for such tasks .
• Support standardisation activities for clean vehicles and road pricing. NICHES experts identified some areas related to the innovative concepts, where standardisation is lacking and poses barriers to the uptake of clean vehicles and road pricing schemes. The EC should support standardisation activities in the following areas:

• Standards for emission checks for clean vehicles in order to gain consistent results in Europe and to foster clean vehicle uptake;
• Standards for noise emissions of vehicles (e.g. for night deliveryservices);
• Standards for road pricing technologies to facilitate technical harmonisation and interoperability.

• Provide adequate framework for urban road pricing. The overarching legal framework for transport pricing is still very incomplete at the European level and relates entirely to heavy good vehicles. The EU should, within the limitations given by the subsidiary principle, provide an enabling legislation for urban road pricing. This also requires addressing privacy concerns related to necessary monitoring and control within urban road pricing schemes. The EU should also continue work on the provision of a common methodology on charging.
• Review legislation and regulations for urban transport innovations. The project highlighted that the current legal and regulatory frameworks at the EU and national levels are potential barriers for the uptake of some urban transport innovations. This concerns licensing issues, competition rules, tendering, access (physical or data), as well as taxing or the provision of incentives. This requires a closer look at the topic, e.g. through research projects.
• Strengthen green procurement activities of clean vehicles. One of the most common problems when starting the introduction of clean vehicles is to find the right vehicle models on the market. By gathering a substantial amount of buyers it is possible to create the necessary demand that drives the market introduction of clean vehicle models forward and helps to lower the prices for new technologies. EU should continue to strengthen its support for green procurement activities. This can, for example, take the form of funding projects that aim at facilitating large-scale procurements of clean vehicles with the participation of different European partners. EU should also consider promotional activities that spread good European examples and highlight the benefits of the procurement of clean vehicles for cities.

Final report

NICHES_Final Publishable Report.pdf (1110 Kb)

Other project deliverable

NICHES_D1.3.pdf (1505 Kb)

NICHES_D2.1.pdf (4839 Kb)

NICHES_D5.6a.pdf (614 Kb)

Final Activity Report (1110 Kb)

Research and Policy Recommendations (1345 Kb)

Partners

• POLIS - Promotion of Operational Liks with Integrated Services, Belgium
• Rupprecht Consult - Forschung & Beratung GmbH, Germany
• PTV Planung Transport Verkehr AG, Germany
• Eurocities ASBL, Belgium
• City of Stockholm Environment And Health Administration, Sweden
• Politechnika Warszawska (Warsaw University of Technology), Poland
• CCRE-CEMR (Council Of European Municipalities And Regions / C), France

Contact for further information

Mr Ivo Cré
POLIS - EUROPEAN CITIES AND REGIONS NETWORKING FOR INNOVATIVE TRANSPORT SOLUTIONS     
Rue du Trône, 98
B-1050  Brussels
Belgium

Tel: (+32) (0)2 500 56 76
Fax: (+32) (0) 2 500 5680

CORDIS: Project page
Website: NICHES - New and Innovative Concepts for Helping European transport Sustainability