General News: eSafety Forum discusses the European Commission’s ITS Action Plan

Date: 26 May 2008

The European Commission is currently preparing an Action Plan on Intelligent Transportation Systems, which recognises the role that ITS can play to deliver clean, efficient and safe and secure road transport. It aims to create a consistent and comprehensive policy framework, to unlock the full potential of ITS in serving European and national policies. The Action Plan is expected to be finalised and published in July this year.
 
The eSafety Forum met on 25 April in Ljubljana to comment on the Action Plan.  A number of key priority actions were identified and selected by the participants, focusing on how ICT technologies could improve road safety and could contribute to environmentally friendly and energy efficient transport solutions.
 
Develop assessment methods
Firstly, the eSafety Forum recognised the urgent need to develop assessment methods to quantify the positive impact that ITS applications have on road safety and/or on clean mobility.  In addition, eSafety stakeholders underlined the necessity to develop methods to assess the contribution of the different stakeholders involved in the ITS chain. The establishment of a tracking system to measure the progress of stakeholders in specific ITS domains could indeed facilitate the identification and resolution of potential problems. 
 
Create a level playing field for ITS systems and services
Secondly, the eSafety Forum acknowledged that the actual implementation of intelligent transportation systems are very different among European Member States. New Member States are lagging far behind in terms of ITS infrastructure development. A European wide ITS ‘toolbox’ could be an important means to trigger deployment of eSafety systems. Therefore, the Forum suggested defining a set of guidelines to support the establishment of a roadmap for the development of ITS infrastructures. The guidelines would encompass a minimum set of functionalities of ITS systems and services to be deployed across Europe.
 
Work towards interoperable solutions
Thirdly, the eSafety Forum recognised the growing need for interoperable ITS solutions across Europe. The EU could play an important role in guaranteeing integration and interoperability among different technological architectures and modalities. Therefore, standardisation should be pursued in many domains, without harming European competitiveness, and more research focus should be put on cooperative systems. 
 
ICT for clean mobility
The eSafety Forum also took the opportunity to debate the work of the ICT for Clean Mobility working group. Discussion focused on the definition, priorities, potential impact and barriers of “Green ITS”. Eco-driving, for example, represents an enormous potential and ICT systems encourage this behaviour.  Just by driving differently, motorists can save up to 25% on fuel consumption and cost!
Other identified “Green ITS” priority actions identified by the working group included traffic management and control, demand and access management, navigation and travel information, as well as freight logistics and fleet management.
 
The working group concluded that the potential is enormous for ICT to make fuel savings and emission reductions, but more R&D is needed to develop and evaluate “green ITS”, solutions in a coordinated approach across Europe.
 
The report and presentations of the 9th eSafety Forum will be available soon!