published: 17-10-2018
The first organised event, the kick-off meeting of City-HUB took place in Madrid on September 27th and 28th, 2012. The two-day meeting agenda included presentations regarding administrative and financial issues of the project, as well as technical presentations given by the relevant responsible partners. The project officer, Ms. Natascia Lai, presented the European Commission's expectations and context, within which City-HUB will focus in the next thirty months. The kick-off meeting was a great opportunity to bring together the project partners and stakeholders by establishing a sense of common goals and defining the efforts needed to achieve them. The meeting ended with a technical visit to Moncloa interchange hosted by Mr. Javier Aldecoa, technical manager of Madrid Interchanges.
Urban transport interchanges play a key role as part of public transport networks, facilitating the links between public transportation modes. Time saving, urban integration, better use of waiting time and improvement of operational business models are some of the benefits that result from the development of efficient urban interchanges. However, although urban transport interchanges are crucial for the improvement of accessibility, there are still problems, gaps or bottlenecks, which are mainly indicated in the coordination among different modes and the use of information systems and management models.
Towards this direction, the City-HUB [INVALID]ives are: 1) to test and validate the City-HUB model for the improvement of integrated management approaches to intermodality, monitoring and operations across European countries, 2) to achieve efficient urban interchanges, reducing their carbon footprint, maximizing the value of new technologies for mobility, communications and virtual travel, reducing accidents and encouraging healthier lifestyles, 3) to achieve the widespread implementation of integrated mobility policies for all – providing more opportunities for citizens to access jobs, healthcare, education and training, retail opportunities as well as leisure facilities, 4) to achieve widespread acceptance of public transport planning that meets social, environmental and mobility efficiency criteria in the most economical and effective way and 5) to make a full contribution to the development of intermodality standards, minimum requirements, quality management, benchmark examples and public transport service level in Europe.
The consortium consists of top European research bodies, the Technical University of Madrid – Transport Research Centre (UPM/TRANSyT), acting as project coordinator, the Institute for Transport Sciences – Non profit Ltd. (KTI), the Institute of Transport Economics (TOI), the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) – Institute of Transport, Panteia/NEA, the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), the Institut français des sciences et technologies des transports, aménagement et réseau (IFSTTAR) and the Transport Research Centre of Czech Republic (CDV).
For further information about the project, please visit the website: www.cityhub-project.eu