MOMENTUM at ITS World Congress: transport planning essential for ITS deployment
People-movers, drones, autonomous shuttles and innovative MaaS solutions were just a couple of technological advancements that were exhibited to 13.000 participants of the ITS World Congress, which took place from 11-15 October 2021 in Hamburg, Germany. Thanks to the coordinated efforts of several EU-funded projects, MOMENTUM was able to share the latest trends from its four cities and technical partners in the framework of a session and as part of the POLIS stand on the exhibition floor.
The 27th iteration of the ITS World Congress can be considered as one of the first international events of the urban mobility and ITS community after the COVID-19 pandemic. The event, which was opened by the mayor of Hamburg, together with Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, who sent her greetings by video message.
The opening ceremony, which took place on Monday afternoon, was followed by four days of discussions and interactions in form of sessions or meetings across five exhibition halls. Hardware- and software providers, NGOs and political entities from Germany, Europe and around the world invited ITS experts and stakeholders to exchange and discuss the future of mobility on the exhibition floor and during more than 100 dedicated sessions.
Javier Burrieza from Nommon introduced our project in the framework of session 56 ‘Assessing the impacts of autonomous vehicles for integrated planning’ to an audience of around 50 stakeholders. The session aimed to answer the questions of ‘how can cities prepare for these disruptive factors?’ and ‘how can these new technological solutions be integrated into existing mobility offers by public and private operators?’ Together with the projects of PAV, Dynaxibility4CE and LEVITATE, MOMENTUM highlighted the fact that integrated traffic planning will be essential for the successful deployment of emerging mobility solutions.
Since the global event was one of the first opportunities of the wider ITS and urban mobility community to meet in person after the significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, project partners and interested stakeholders also used the opportunity to physically meet for the first time after more than 18 months.
Overall, Niklas Schmalholz (Project Officer, POLIS Network) summarised the five days at the ITS World Congress in the following way:
‘MOMENTUM was in the unique position to be present at the exhibition floor as part of a group of ITS-related projects under the umbrella of POLIS Network. This was a great way to boost our outreach and get engaged with related projects and the wider community – a great success’
