EU to support European ITS and cross-border traveller information services

Source: Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) i, published on Wednesday, January 21 2015.

The EU's TEN-T Programme will co-finance with over €50 million the deployment and use of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) on European highways to improve their safety, security and efficiency. The projects will address several ITS services, including intelligent truck parking, travel time and real-time traffic information.

Close cooperation among 20 EU Member States, road authorities and private stakeholders will improve and support ITS on the main European road network. It will provide safety and traffic related information to all users and ensure the interoperability of ITS services across the EU.

ITS will be deployed in five separate projects, each of them focussing on a specific part of Europe:

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    The URSA MAJOR project will cover roads linking the North Sea ports, the Ruhr and Rhine area, as well as metropolitan areas in southern Germany and northern Italy. Austria and Switzerland are also involved in the project as transit countries.
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    The CROCODILE project includes three main road corridors: Baltic-Adriatic (linking Germany to Italy and Slovenia), Rhine-Danube (Germany to Bulgaria) and Orient-East-Med (Germany to Greece).
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    The NEXT-ITS project will deal with the Scandinavian-Mediterranean Corridor from Oslo and the Finnish-Russian border in the north via Copenhagen, to Bremen and Hannover in Germany.
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    The MedTIS project will deploy ITS services in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal along the Mediterranean corridor, linking several major sea ports and connecting the Mediterranean with the Atlantic coast.
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    The Arc Atlantique project will link key economic nodes in The UK (Belfast, Glasgow, Cardiff, London), Ireland (Dublin), (France (Calais, Lille, Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse), The Netherlands (Rotterdam, Amsterdam), Belgium (Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Liège), Spain (San Sebastian, Bilbao, Valladolid, Santander, A Coruña) and Portugal (Porto, Lisbon).

Examples of ITS services deployed by the above projects are:

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    Intelligent truck parking services, based on common European standards to find available, safe and secure parking places for trucks
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    Road navigation services with reliable information on travel conditions, to plan the most cost-efficient journeys and receive accurate travel time estimations

The projects will also improve traffic management and the cross-border exchange of information among the EU Member States, thus reducing delays due to traffic congestion and increasing the safety level in the European roads.

The projects were selected for EU funding with the assistance of external experts under the TEN-T Multi-Annual Call 2013, priority 'Intelligent Transport Systems'. Their implementation will be monitored by INEA, the European Commission's Innovation and Networks Executive Agency.

All projects are to be completed by December 2015.

More information

Projects: 2013-EU-50002-P 2013-EU-50003-P 2013-EU-50004-P 2013-EU-50005-P 2013-EU-50006-P

The TEN-T Programme was established by the European Commission to support the construction and upgrade of transport infrastructure across the European Union (http://inea.ec.europa.eu/en/ten-t).

The INEA is managing the technical and financial implementation of the TEN-T programme (http://inea.ec.europa.eu).

Contact

INEA-Communication@ec.europa.eu

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