The mission of CIE is to support the cycling industries of Europe with insight into the hottest political topics for the sector and to make sure our members are represented in the corridors of power at EU level.
Within this agenda there is no doubt which subject has kept the CIE team busiest in the past few weeks. The multiple opportunities and challenges presented by smart and connected mobility have seen our team travelling throughout Europe on a weekly basis to represent our members, meet partners and present the opportunities from our EU funded project “Bicycles and ITS”. This autumn series of events culminated in Antwerp on 2nd December when we brought it all together and discuss how these multiple complex threads could be coordinated in a strategic “Roadmap” for the cycling industries.
It is very important for CIE to be active in these fields because the emerging policy frameworks, standards and infrastructure can have a big impact on whether people cycle more or less, and on the climate for cycling businesses in the future. The EU itself says “ITS is key to support jobs and growth in the transport sector.”
The scale of the opportunity and its political importance can be illustrated by our international schedule in the last few weeks
- “Behaviour change - growing cycling through ITS” brought together international experts and local stakeholders at a BITS Project Academy in Yorkshire UK.
- Digital Transport Days Conference – the highest-level political summit on connected brought together the EU Commission, (Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport) and Finnish Presidency of the European Council in Helsinki.
- The CIVITAS Congress in Austria brought together 650 delegates from 45 countries to work on the EU’s mobility agenda for cities. CIE priorities of ITS and urban freight were both well represented by our projects and partners.
Meanwhile back in Brussels we have been on the podium at an EU level Thank-Tank for Urban Mobility and partnering in several key stakeholder events on the challenging subject of data for new mobility, covering challenges like open data, standards and privacy, including the EU’s own Expert Group meeting on Multi-Modal ITS.
What have we learned? There are a lot of opportunities to come in this sector and we could even hope for future EU funding for our sector. But perhaps more importantly, our ITS colleagues in other industries need us – an organised and innovative cycling sector that leads the promotion of Active Travel in ITS.
Our to do list is long. We see a clear need for an ITS roadmap within the EU Cycling Strategy and the BITS project. We have to deliver the BITS Project because the project delivers live examples for cycling and ITS. Business development and innovation needs to continue in applications, tools and methods to encourage cycling, multi-modal transport systems including bike sharing, data policy, standards, sharing and open data availability and there is potential to create a directory of service providers for local government to use in tenders and calls.
Fortunately we have some fantastic members who are leaders in the field!
A wrap-up of the successful conference in Antwerp on 2 December is available here .
Click here to see presentations of the day.
Click here to see photo gallery of the event.
