The ambitious goals of climate protection and energy and resource efficiency as well as the tremendous changes in society and economy require restless innovation and progress in the transportation systems. The modal transport sectors are continuously advancing their research agendas to meet these challenges. Nevertheless, these efforts remain fragmented within the modal silos. In order to reach the European goals towards sustainability and efficiency and to meet the transport and mobility needs of all European citizens, a truly integrated and seamless transport system for people and freight must be developed and implemented, and the full potential of transformative technologies has to be exploited. This can only be achieved if user-centeredness, cross-modality and technology transfer become a focus of efforts of all stakeholders in transport.
Importantly, the Coordination and Support Action Mobility4EU promotes a user-centred perspective and a participatory framework involving all relevant actors from inside and outside the transport sector covering all transport modes including stakeholders representing users including specific groups and communities that are vulnerable to be excluded, technology suppliers, policy makers on national and regional level, transport service providers and research organisations.
Correspondingly one of the central aims of the project Mobility4EU is the initiation of a EUROPEAN TRANSPORT AND MOBILITY FORUM (ETM Forum) that focuses on user-centred aspects and cross-modality thereby striving to give a voice to users and to truly connect the stakeholders of the different modes. Efficient collaboration between modes is essential when building an integrated transport system offering cross-modal solutions. At the same time, including the user in the development process from the start is required to foster uptake of implemented solutions.
The ETM Forum intends to become a place for discussion and debate, providing a voice for users and fostering cross-fertilization of technologies and knowledge-transfer between modes and with stakeholders beyond transport. This requires bringing together all relevant stakeholders of transport of passengers and freight and of sectors beyond the traditional transport industry as, e.g. smart systems, energy, data and services. Together, through the ETM Forum, it will be possible to explore how to efficiently include the perspective of the user needs of the European citizens, how to create added value by transferring knowledge and how to apply new solutions and usage models.
The ETM Forum aims to provide an effective and efficient participative framework for this collaboration, forming an alliance that helps in identifying, designing and implementing novel ideas and innovation in synergetic ways and in participatory processes, in order to:
- Establish cross-modal links between different transport modes for passengers and freight
- Integrate user perspectives into the network and into all transport aspects
- Involve stakeholders beyond transport
- Initiate collaborative projects
The Mobility4EU project has developed a Vision for the European transport system in 2030 and an Action Plan including a Roadmap to implement that vision. The Vision and Action Plan have been developed interactively with stakeholders representing demand and supply side in passenger and freight transport. A series of interactive workshops as well as online stakeholder consultations have been organized within a scientific stepwise approach, the Multi-Actor-Multi Criteria-Analysis complemented by a more creative story mapping methodology. The process towards the Action plan is based on a study of trends, continues with the identification of technical solutions and innovative concepts and builds and ranks future scenarios for transport out of these results. This leads to the formulation of the Vision and the compilation of the Action Plan. Recommendations for tangible measures in research, innovation and implementation targeted towards various stakeholder groups have also been derived.
STAGE 1: Study of societal challenges that will influence future transport demand and supply and identification of promising and innovative transport solutions across all modes answering these demands
STAGE 2: Vision for the European transport system in 2030
STAGE 3: Action Plan to implement the 2030 Vision and Recommendations towards the relevant actor groups
STAGE 4: Creation of the European Transport & Mobility Forum (ETM Forum)
The aim is for the ETM Forum to become a place for discussion and debate, providing a voice for users and fostering cross-fertilization of technologies and knowledge.
TOUCHPOINT 1: The Mobility4EU consortium is currently working on detailing feasible paths towards the implementation of the ETM Forum.
TOUCHPOINT 2: The Mobility4EU consortium is continuously seeking new collaborations to beneficially extend the core of the ETM Forum and support its realisation.
BOTTLENECK1: To be successful, the ETM Forum initiative relies on the active participation of a large number of stakeholders and this will probably take significant time to become reality (eg. 1-2 years).
Many initiatives, often fully or partly financed through European Collaborative projects, have been performed in order to assess the current situation regarding transport and mobility in Europe and indeed around the world. The Mobility4EU project, however, is focusing also on how to create the ETM Forum as a place for discussion and debate, providing a voice for users and fostering cross-fertilization of technologies and knowledge-transfer between modes and with stakeholders beyond transport. Thus, the network and also the activities and discussions started during the project shall be continued over the project duration.
Furthermore, the entire process from studying trends and options for solutions, developing a vision and finally the action plan has been organized within a structured participatory approach that aimed to engage a broad stakeholder community into the consultation processes. This wass achieved by employing a structured tool, the Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis (MAMCA) and an accompanying story mapping process that supported the process in a more creative and interactive way. Thus, it was possible to include the views and perspective in a bottom-up yet structured approach.
