Skip to main content

2016 Polis conference calls greater understanding of automated transport

The recent Polis 2016 Conference was attended by 450 mobility professionals from across Europe and beyond who met to debate on urban and regional mobility. Local and regional authorities called for greater understanding of where automated road transport can benefit cities. The conference plenary session brought together local governments, the automobile industry, research and the European and international institutions to explore where automated vehicles can deliver benefit for cities and what needs to b
December 5, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
The recent Polis 2016 Conference was attended by 450 mobility professionals from across Europe and beyond who met to debate on urban and regional mobility. Local and regional authorities called for greater understanding of where automated road transport can benefit cities.

The conference plenary session brought together local governments, the automobile industry, research and the European and international institutions to explore where automated vehicles can deliver benefit for cities and what needs to be done to make this happen. The panellists acknowledged that automated vehicles are not an end in themselves.

Using an online live voting tool, conference delegates proposed public transport as the most adapted mode for full automation, ahead of public transport feeders for the first/last mile, shared mobility and urban delivery services.

Automation will be a priority item on the Polis agenda for 2017 and will draw on information from Polis members involved in automated vehicle projects and the knowledge gained through Polis involvement in several European projects dealing with automation, including CityMobil2 which demonstrated fully automated first/last mile transport services, and MAVEN which is investigating the implications of fully automated vehicles on traffic management.

Related Content

  • December 2, 2022
    ITS Australia Global Summit 2023: super-sized
    Four-day Global Summit will be held on 28-31 August, 2023 in Melbourne: accelerating smarter, safer, sustainable transport is focus of next year's expanded event for whole ITS community
  • December 15, 2015
    Mobility as a Service gaining traction in US and Europe
    As Mobility as a Service starts to move into the mainstream of transport planning, David Crawford compares European and North American initiatives. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a concept fast gaining traction on both sides of the Atlantic as a way of giving travellers digital multimodal one-stop shops and journey planning tools as an alternative to private car use. Planned delivery methods include subscription-based travel packages in Europe, and 'mobility aggregator' apps, including employee commute ben
  • December 4, 2023
    Sustainable mobility is a vote-winner, insists Polis
    Organisation's annual conference gave its top award to Groningen in the Netherlands
  • February 1, 2012
    Include ITS in policy decisions from the start, not as an afterthought
    DG TREN's Fotis Karamitsos, on why the European Commission's new ITS Action Plan is looking to the past for future direction. The European Commission's (EC's) new Action Plan for the Deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems in Europe, which was announced as 2008 drew to a close, intends that transport and travel become 'cleaner; more efficient, including energy efficient; and safer and more secure'. At first sight, that wording might be interpreted as marking a significant policy shift within Europe, wit