CORDIS Archive

The more than 20 projects present in the freight transport working group were organised in 5 groups

• Intermodal modelling and planning (EMOLITE, IQ, REFORM, SCANDINET, EUDET, Shifting-Cargo)
• Communication/EDI (CESAR, COREM, PISCES, X-MODALL)
• Access to infrastructure (FREIA, REDEFINE, SURFF, WELCOME, UGFFM)
• Handling and intermodal transport equipment (FLIHTT, IMPULSE, TERMINET)
• Maritime/Ports (EUROBORDER, INTERPORT, OSIRIS)

Each project representative gave a presentation of the work content, the expected results and the relevant feedback concerning the two clustering themes, "user requirements" and "door to door chain control/facilitation". Presentations were usefully complemented by an interactive discussion between the participants.

The debate revealed the following similarities between projects, and confirmed project representatives’ interests:

• All projects present address user requirements, but sometimes from radically different points of view.

• Apart from the projects that are strongly focussed on solving specific problems or identifying bottlenecks, all other projects take into account user requirements in their analysis. The analysis is done in three different ways:

  • users are participating in the project as direct partners, associated contractors or sponsoring partners;
  • enquiries are undertaken in the transport market through interviews;
  • projects establish users’ groups
  
  

• The analysis of user requirements is usually strictly related to the project objectives. Nevertheless, an analysis of general requirements is common to the different projects and may cause overlapping. The analyses’ first results show that intermodal transport users ask for lower costs and better quality of services. However, different categories of users rank the requirements differently.

• Participants expressed the need for a centralised database with general information on user requirements. This would facilitate the organisation of targeted surveys for specific subjects. It is often very difficult to obtain data from users as they are commercially sensitive.

• There is a lot of benefit to be gained from an enhanced co-operation between projects on the analysis of user requirements. Currently, this only happens when different projects have a common partner in their consortia.

• Numerous projects advocated a co-operation on the use of Internet to provide real-time information to users, which they have identified as an important user requirement.

• It appeared that no project is currently investigating the potential for intermodal transport to add value to companies’ supply and distribution chains by integrating transport and logistics functions.

• Standardisation of message formats and protocols, appears to be an indispensable but difficult effort to facilitate intermodal transport. Every user has different requirements and large operators tend to have their own proprietary standards. In many cases, adopting standards means changing procedures, which provokes large costs.

Door-to-door intermodal chain control proved to be a difficult but very important subject. For the moment, no project is dealing with total chain control from the operator’s point of view. Some projects are studying the use of telematic systems for an overall chain information process.

Three main areas for enhanced co-operation between RTD projects were identified:

• Establishment of databases
  Projects should improve communication and exchange of information in order to avoid overlapping and to profit from synergy effects. There is a clear interest for projects to exchange the results of analyses on user requirements.

• Data collection
  An accompanying measure should be launched to provide a tool for common general data collection in intermodal transport at European level. Eurostat’s data are not enough.

• Benchmarking
  The further develoment of this practice is to be strongly supported. A formal system for the exchange of good practices should be established at European level

For the next clustering meeting, the participants proposed to have more focussed subjects with smaller or sequential groups.

Twelve projects were grouped around four themes, namely urban transport, rural transport, intermodal travel and long distance transport. The dominant theme was urban transport. The participants noted an evident relationship with a number of projects which deal with traffic management and which were clustered in the working group on Traffic and Mobility.

Urban transport
The projects grouped around this theme develop new solutions to integrate transport systems (traffic management systems and supply systems) or which build organisational and policy frameworks to promote public transport. The users identified by the projects are mostly transport operators and service providers, public and city authorities, and passengers.

MOTIF is exploring new and viable market-oriented transport systems, based on a comprehensive analysis of users’ requirements. FATIMA is identifying new ways of financing urban transport by the private sector. Users in this project also include shops, construction companies or other business interests. The project will establish schemes and procedures to solve the often conflicting requirements of different users.

INTRAMUROS is studying the legal, institutional and organisational aspects which impede the integration of urban and inter-urban traffic management and public transport systems. It is closely related to AUSIAS which co-ordinates traffic management systems already in place. In addition to the above-mentioned categories, users also include urban and inter-urban traffic authorities and parking operators.

ISOTOPE has studied various forms of public transport organisations in Europe and has concluded that to increase the share of public transport, urban transport systems must be integrated at three levels: the physical network, the logical network and the contractual network. QUATTRO is identifying the quality criteria in urban public transport and in the tendering documents which establish the relationship between public authorities and public transport operators.

CONCERT is refining the GAUDI prototype which provides an open architecture for integrated payment and door-to-door trip planning in terminals. Important users for CONCERT are also banks. ICARE is introducing contactless technologies into a public transport environment.

Rural Transport
SAMPO is investigating and demonstrating demand-responsive public transport systems in rural as well as in urban and regional areas. Underlying technologies are road optimisation, mapping, automatic vehicles locations and travel dispatch centres.

The requirements of passengers are flexible and accessible services, reliable information and notification of any changes in the transport services. Operators require market profitability and frameworks for intermodality. Authorities’ main concerns are to change the modal split and to improve mobility.

Intermodal travel
PROMISE is developing a European-wide system to provide multimodal travel information for door-to-door trip planning and on-route travel information. End-users are segmented as tourists, business travellers and commuters. A first analysis of their requirements showed that information must be dynamic and accurate, in real time and location-specific while the terminal on which to display it must be highly portable.

Long distance transport
TAPE has developed a tool to optimise the interior performance of an airport taking into account both the air-side and land-side components. Users are airport authorities, planners and managers. EUROTRACKS develops multimodal baggage transportation systems and multimodal information and guidance systems along the travel chain, based on an investigation of passengers’ requirements.

All projects analyse user requirements and most of them are user-driven. "Users" are usually passengers or drivers, public transport operators, traffic authorities, parking managers, airport authorities, business interests (as potential investors), and public authorities mainly at city or regional level and to a less extent at national or European level. In some cases, other users include banks, information providers or telecommunication operators. Table 1 in annex provides a tentative summary of main users and user requirements per project.

Users requirements are distinguished between those which can be generalised and those which are site-specific. For the first category, many projects from the 1st call already yield valuable knowledge, which is available to other projects. The Commission invited participants to continue exchange of information and deliverables. As for the second category, participants concluded that there is still a real need for harmonising definitions and methodologies between different modes in order to enable comparative analysis across sites and a full intermodal approach in research and development projects.

Although a common understanding of the concept of intermodal facilitation is lacking, the participants suggested three elements which facilitate intermodal passenger transport. The first is the elaboration of a strategic framework. The basic conditions for enabling intermodal passenger transport were suggested as being (1) the harmonisation between transport modes of the regulatory frameworks which are different so far, (2) the articulation of the logical and physical network, and (3) the integration of operational management between modes.

The second aspect concerns technical systems. Some sub-components of the transport system are essential to foster intermodality, for example a clearance system for payments. The third element of facilitation relates to emerging operators. Some participants argued that the growing number of federations of public transport operators in some European countries boost the pace of integration of transport services between themselves but also with other urban services. Tour operators were cited as an example of intermodal transport facilitator.

In spite of the small number of projects and their broad scope (from policy research to industrial development), and despite the fact that some were still in the preparation phase, the meeting produced exchanges of information. It raised the participants’ awareness about the wide range of issues to be taken into account for promoting intermodality, and it gave an opportunity to establish contacts in order to exchange data on users requirements. Participants felt this initiative was important to prepare the ground for interconnecting different transport systems, especially the urban transport system with the long-distance transport systems. They called for further similar activities but around more targetted topics. The group suggested in particular to organise meetings on topics like:

• passengers transfer point efficiency,
• ticketing and payment systems,
• money and information flows,
• market studies.

The Commission was also urged to organise a better use of Internet in order to exchange project deliverables and results.

Next section: IV. Working Group 3: Traffic and Mobility