Intertraffic ON AIR webinar [12 December 2023] –RECORDING NOW AVAILABLE
SUMMARY
The discussion, “Towards Climate Neutral Cities: let’s GoGreen with ITS” concentrated on the current European Green Deal and how transport can achieve its target of a 90% reduction in related greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
112 cities have publicly committed to this target, and also to reduce their emissions to 55% of 1990 levels by 2030. SWARCO has launched its GoGreen initiative and has spent much of 2023 talking to these cities to understand their challenges and discuss solutions, with a promise to deliver the results of their work at Intertraffic Amsterdam.
“At SWARCO, we asked ourselves, how can we play our part?” explains Itir Coskun, Regional Innovation Manager at SWARCO and project leader at the GoGreen Initiative. “Some of the most common challenges are faced by different cities in different countries, however, we also know that often even though these pain points are the same in different cities, different countries, the specific reasons behind those are not usually the same.” In this Intertraffic ON AIR webinar Itir talks about the four main pain points identified being congestion, parking, pollution and keeping the network safe for vulnerable road users, discusses how cities can improve these, and how SWARCO can help.
Representatives of two cities, the Italian capital Rome and Finnish city of Tampere also share their views and approach.
Giacomo Tuffanelli, a Traffic Engineer at Roma Mobilita explains how Rome has the highest car ownership in Europe, with an average of nearly one car per inhabitant so faces a challenge of getting people out of their cars. “I'm trying to promote different ways different modes of moving around the city,” he says. “There's a lot of work on the cycling side, we are building many cycle lanes and trying to promote this way of moving about. On the other hand, there are also many investments on the public transport side... focusing attention on tramways and other systems that will enhance the backbone of the public transport.”
With extreme weather in winter, the final guest is Mika Kulmala, Project Manager at the Finnish city of Tampere, who summarises how he keeps the network moving, including using the latest modelling and signal technology: “We changed our traffic light operations to use the Inflow system, which is an adaptive system based on pre-configured control policies,” he explains. “Every hour we calculate what is the best way to operate our traffic light network, in our city, on our streets.”
The webinar also covers data integration, dealing with extreme weather and why cities have been so keen to be involved in the GoGreen initiative.
Intertraffic Amsterdam takes place from 16-19 April 2024, and SWARCO will be announcing details of its GoGreen initiative findings at the event.
Watch the recording of the webinar here
