UPPER is a new project funded under the Horizon Europe Program of the European Commission and coordinated by the International Association of Public Transport (UITP). It aims to lead the transition towards a zero-emission mobility which will become the cornerstone of climate neutrality by 2030, in line with the goal of Cities Mission and the priorities of the Green Deal.
UPPER aims to improve the public transport offer and attractiveness, test and evaluate the resilience of public transport, use simulation tools, data, and artificial intelligence to trigger behaviour change as well as understand and improve links with active modes of transport. The overall target is increasing the use of use of public transport by more than 30% and the user satisfaction by more than 25% in the participating cities.
The project will last 48 months, and be delivered by a consortium of 41 partners, from 10 countries. Four EMTA members take part in the consortium: Ruter# in Oslo, BKK in Budapest, TML in Lisbon, TheTA in Thessaloniki.
Changing habits: shift from private car to public transport
UPPER will persuade people to use the public transport instead of their private car by implementing measures that will act on five innovation axes that condition users’ choices:
- Mindset and culture
- Urban mobility planning
- Mobility services ecosystem
- Road network management
- Democratic governance
The measures will be tested in the UPPER Living Labs (in Valencia, Rome, Île-de-France, Oslo, and Mannheim) and the UPPER Twinning Cities (in Lisbon, Leuven, Hannover Region, Budapest, and Thessaloniki) and will be adapted to local contexts and objectives. In Rome, UPPER will test the inclusion of new mobility services in multimodal interchange nodes. In Île-de-France, UPPER will test a measure promoting the use of public transport for large events. In Mannheim, UPPER will establish participative governance and dialogue formats to address citizen needs.
EMTA will help reach UPPER milestones
In short, EMTA will contribute to creating innovative solutions to increase the efficiency, reliability and attractiveness of public transport, and make sure that the UPPER results are successfully communicated, replicated and upscaled.
EMTA will engage with its network of public transport authorities throughout the project. All the knowledge, information and experiences accumulated over the years in cooperation with partners comes together within EMTA. That enables the network to tap into this expertise, providing an overview of the systems in use and the difficulties experienced among Europe’s larger public transport authorities. As part of the project, EMTA will also:
- Make a diagnosis of urban mobility governance across Europe.
- Validate tentative pilot requirements through interviews with EMTA members whose governance frameworks are comparable to these observed in demo sites.
- Develop effective governance models for the interplay of various transport services and their re-sale through multimodal digital mobility services.
- Report on methodology and results of EMTA’s systematic public transport and mobility governance analysis.
- Help set up a benchmarking and evaluation process.
- Disseminate and communicate findings towards its network of public transport authorities and beyond.
On 24-25 January 2023 the UPPER consortium held a kick-off meeting in Brussels. Zahraa Jawad, Thomas Geier and Alexandre Santacreu represented EMTA on this occasion, engaged with the wider public transport community, and prepared the delivery of various project tasks.
EMTA will work over the next 4 years to make this project a success. Watch this space!
project website: https://www.upperprojecteu.eu/
photo credit: Ruter#