EURFORUM the European Research Forum for Urban Mobility is a European initiative, within EU Commission. The objective is to create a forum at the European level, effectively representing stakeholders of European research on urban mobility, including representatives of local authorities, public transport associations, research bodies, etc and provide recommendations for the co-ordination of European research.
Led by UITP, EURFORUM gets funding from the EU Commission (FP 6 programme) and brings together ASSTRA, POLIS, ECTRI, CERTU, TU Dresden and EMTA which is involved in the “consensus building” part.
The 1rst stakeholder conference took place in Brussels on 28 January 2007 during which EURFORUM presented the State of the Art Report on urban transport research in Europe analysing 15 research topics linked to planning, policy and technology development in the field of urban mobility.
EURFORUM defined also its vision for urban mobility in 2020 with the objective of ensuring the future of European urban regions as vivid centres of economic, cultural and social life in Europe, in which citizens must benefit of clean, efficient, inter-modal and fairly priced transportation.
Some gaps have been identified between the State of the Art Report and the 2020 Vision revealing further research needs for Europe in the coming years and notably in the following areas:
– Urban transport demand analysis-data collection
– Urban transport supply side
– User aspects
– Economics and institutional constraints
EURFORUM will then develop a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) by November 2007, implemented by the needs identified during the discussions on 28 February 2007.
It is expected that this SRA will be used as an input in the priorities of the forthcoming 7th Framework Programme for Research.
www.eurforum.net/html/fileadmin/SoA_FinalDraft_160207_FINAL.PDF