New railway station concept for green and socially inclusive smart cities

The project stemming from this topic shall contribute to deliver the expected outcomes and the R&I work includes:

• The development of analytical tools that will support the methodology for evaluating the costs and benefits of broadening the original purpose and functions of a railway station in the context of urban planning and mobility (from a simple departure/arrival point to a dense node of mobility, economic and social activities) as well as smart grids and energy performance (and any relevant station transformation),
• The definition of sustainability indicators (including social, economic environmental and resiliency dimensions) guiding the methodology.
• The definition of a common European-wide framework or methodology that, while enabling a sufficient latitude to accommodate specific local conditions or prevailing opportunities, may still guarantee opportunities to scale up the “model” to applicability across the EU. The requested methodology for enhancing the performance of new/existing stations integrated in smart cities should cover, among the other expected outcomes described above, articularly aspects related to the energy behaviour (stations as energy hubs integrated in the smart grids and, as such, improving the energy performance of the smart city), aspects related to the mobility and urban planning as well as aspects related to users’ experience.
• The implementation of at least four (4) specific pilot “Living Labs” (in four different Member States and including one station in regional areas serving capillary lines) that will investigate how stakeholders and citizenship can fully benefit from the new station model proposed for those specific pilots:
  • It is expected that the applicant will setup the living labs making use of workshops, being the occasion to collaborate with local partners and civil society in order to understand which operative options can make railway stations and their surrounding neighbourhoods becoming the primary driver of sustainable practices of mobility, logistics and work, and resilient infrastructures able to readapt when necessary,
  • Methodological criteria and quantitative/qualitative deliverables are expected to stem from the four pilots, tacking the co-design and the transformation of railway stations into multi-service infrastructures,
  • A final conference for each pilot showcasing the achieved results should be organised.
• Take stock of the output of the new station model proposed for those four specific pilots and integrate the results to fine-tune the proposed European-wide methodology of the new railway station.

Interactions with other EU-RAIL projects and EU-Missions:

The action to be funded under this topic shall share the outputs with the linked projects from EU-RAIL Flagship Area 4 (stemming from the call topic HORIZON-ER-JU-FA4-01), take into consideration the work that they will release and work together for any potential interfaces.

The action to be funded under this topic is expected to liaise with the actions financed under the EU-Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, in particular with the aim of creating synergy with mobility related initiatives developed under this EU Mission.

Gender dimension

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.