Networking for innovative urban transport concepts
The 'New and innovative concepts for helping European transport sustainability' (Niches) project supports the development and adoption of innovative technology and policy-based urban transport concepts that will contribute to establishing sustainable urban transport systems. Towards these ends, the EU-funded team concentrated on achieving a wide range of objectives aiming to facilitate coordination of research activities of all stakeholders in innovative urban transport. They also worked to help identify and disseminate examples of innovative transport measures in crucial areas. Oriented towards gradually opening up the impact of innovative urban transport concepts, Niches work was structured to progress across four stages, followed by dissemination and awareness raising activities. The stages involved establishing the state of the art, assessing success factors, barriers and transferability of innovative concepts, integrating innovative concepts into coherent transport strategies, and deriving roadmaps and policy recommendations. Work in the first stage was crucial to set the foundation for the rest of the stages. A well-founded information basis was strengthened by identification of relevant stakeholders in the project’s thematic fields, and initiated discussion and exchanges among stakeholders in various fields of urban transport. Efforts resulted in better insight into implementation processes of the concepts as well as support networking with and among relevant stakeholders. Project members developed recommendations for future research addressing gaps, formats and perspectives, and promoted considerations for policy to enhance development and uptake of European urban transport innovation. Niches’ 12 Innovative Concepts showcase new ideas for solving problems and achieving policy goals related to urban transport. Many of these concepts have already been successfully implemented in various cities across Europe, but need further work for broader deployment. Barriers to implementation of these concepts were explored, and integrated strategies were defined for combining Innovative Concepts and mainstream measures. Policy and research recommendations for stakeholders at local, national and EU levels were published in a series of publications, and results and outcomes were presented in different brochures published at project end.
