SCALE-UP Partners United During Urban Mobility Days in Seville
From 4-6 October 2023, politicians, local authorities, industry, and urban transport practitioners united during the Urban Mobility Days, at the Fibes Conference & Exhibition Centre in Seville (Spain) to discuss & plan ahead for a sustainable future for Europe’s urban mobility.
The event was organised by the European Commission in collaboration with the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU. During the three-day event, SCALE-UP partners participated in various roundtables, workshops, and inspiring sessions, aiming to optimise the connectivity & climate resilience of the cities and urban nodes under a multimodal transport system.
On the day before the conference, several closed meetings took place upon invitation, including dedicated CIVITAS meetings for Communication & Dissemination and Evaluation Working Groups respectively, in which consortium partners TML and STA took part. The meetings focused on the value of cross-project collaboration & the keys to a successful communication & dissemination and evaluation project strategy were analysed. SCALE-UP served as a best practice example concerning the evaluation framework of the project. Additionally, the new CIVITAS clusters were presented & all project representatives teamed up by cluster, in an effort to engage, exchange opinions, ideas, and suggestions on how to ameliorate the future cooperation between them. SCALE-UP in particular joined the Governance and Integrated Planning Cluster together with it’s sister project MOVE21.
The first day wrapped up with a social dinner and a more casual opportunity to exchange project ideas, goals, and cross-WP cooperation between SCALE-UP and MOVE21.
On the first day of the conference, many SCALE-UP partners participated in the session “All You Ever Wanted to Know About the Common European Mobility Data Space”, where they had the opportunity to listen to the panel of experts analysing the necessity to create a common European mobility data space that will facilitate better access to transport & mobility data.
On the same day, the session entitled “National SUMP Support Programmes: How to Tailor Support to the Needs of Cities” took place & offered futher assistance and details on the Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators (SUMI), which was perceived as a very useful tool for cities and urban mobility areas, allowing them to spot the strengths & weaknesses of their transport system. Many cities & urban areas under the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP), are in the process of transforming their transport system to a single and multimodal one for the mobility of people and goods, SUMI indicators are a helpful tool to evaluate their performance.
Stella Aaltonen from the City of Turku, participated in the Meet the Civitas Community session, chaired by Marcel Rommerts, Head of Unit Horizon Europe Transport, CINEA where they received more insights on how the CIVITAS initiative can promote sustainable urban mobility.
Lola Ortiz Sánchez, General Director of Planning and Mobility Infrastructures, City of Madrid, has given a speech at the Plenary 1- Urban Mobility Community Support to Ukraine, dedicated to providing sustainable solutions in Ukrainian towns & cities.
Sergio Fernandéz Balaguer, Head of International Department, Municipal Transport Company of Madrid (EMT) & Laura Delgado, Head of External Affairs at the Regional Consortium of Transportation for Madrid(CRTM), represented the SCALE-UP project in the session called “Transforming Urban Public Transport – a Global Perspective”, to debate about the EU's ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the role that transport, as a key sector, can play in achieving them. Among other topics, the discussion was around the challenges and opportunities of decarbonising urban public transport systems; the role of gender in the decarbonisation of public transport; best practice examples and innovative solutions from across the world and how they can be implemented within the European context, bringing together key players & important actors in order to promote sustainable mobility further.
Furthermore, partners used the time effectively and also filmed some interesting interviews with four SCALE-UP representatives for the CIVITAS Initiative, who shared with us insights about the three urban nodes & explained the evaluation framework and its importance on the success of the project.
Michiel Penne from Stad Antwerpen presented the project and the case of the Antwerp Urban Node. From the City of Turku, Stella Aaltonen shared the mobility measures of the Turku Urban Node, and Sergio Fernández Balaguer from EMT Madrid highlighted the most impressive works of the Madrid Urban Node. The evaluation framework and its importance for the project’s success was explained by Dirk Engels from Transport & Mobility Leuven.
Throughout the three-day event, a joint booth was shared with the sister project MOVE 21 and the new GEMINI project, open to discussion for everyone passing by & required more information about the project’s progress & all the interesting upcoming activities for this innovative urban mobility project.
Also, the call for fellow cities was introduced, an innovative project idea, calling all local authorities (cities, metropolitan areas or agencies, relevant transport authorities) to follow the measures & policies of the three SCALE-UP Urban Nodes Antwerp (BE), Madrid (ES), and Turku (FI) and transform their transport system towards a more sustainable and friendlier to the environment and its citizens. Below you can find the full call & the application form.
The event was a great success and a unique opportunity to showcase the SCALE-UP project and brainstorm around the topic of urban mobility. We are looking forward to next year’s edition of the event!