The findings of the first year of the Urban Transport Benchmarking Initiative will be presented at a conference, to take place on 15 June 2004 at the Maison des Associations Internationales, Brussels (rue Washington 40).
The initiative is funded by the European Commission DG TREN, and in its first year has attracted representatives from cities such as Aalborg, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Helsinki, London, Lyon, Oulu, Rome and Valencia. There will be opportunities for new participants to join the Urban Transport Benchmarking Initiative for the next year of the project.
Since the launch of the initiative in November 2003, five working groups have been established covering the following themes; ‘Public transport organisation and policy’, ‘Behavioural and social issues in public transport’, ‘City logistics’, ‘Cycling’ and ‘Demand management’. A range of cities have been visited to enable the participants of these working groups to get practical experience of seeing policy measures in practice.
The ‘Public transport organisation and policy’ working group is being led by the International Association of Public Transport (UITP). The group’s research question involves looking at the financial and organisational aspects of urban transport. In order to collect data to try and answer the research question the group has devised a range of indicators based around the key themes of cost reduction, revenue maximisation, service quality and patronage levels.
Sets of indicators have been defined by the project team with input from the participants and data has been collected by each of the participating cities. The data will be analysed and the results will be made available on the project website, www.transportbenchmarks.org/, prior to the end of year conference. The project sets out to foster best practice and aims to use this experience to draw practical conclusions about how to achieve more sustainable urban transport systems in European cities.
It will help local and regional actors to identify and develop best practice standards, to understand the reasons behind differences in performance and to improve their own performance and processes by adapting the lessons learnt to local circumstances.
The consortium is led by Transport & Travel Research Ltd (TTR) and includes the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) and the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC).
The project covers the accession countries and the European Union member states. It has close links with the CIVITAS project, in which 14 pilot cities and five associated cities are implementing integrated actions to combat congestion and pollution.
Notes for editors
For press information, please contact UITP’s Communications Department: Cara McLaughlin (Tel: +32 2 6636639; Fax: +32 2 6601072; cara.mclaughlin@uitp.com) or Stéphanie Loozen (Tel: +32 2 661 31 99; Fax: +32 2 6601072; stephanie.loozen@uitp.com).
If you are interested in attending the end of year conference or getting involved in the next stage of the project please contact the project team at benchmarking@ttr-ltd.com or telephone +44 1543 416416 and ask for Sarah Clifford or Neil Taylor. Further information can also be obtained from Jo Baker at TTR on tel: +44 1543 416416 or by visiting the project website at www.transportbenchmarks.org/
The International Association of Public Transport (UITP) is the international organisation for public transport authorities and operators, policy decision-makers, scientific institutes and the public transport supply and service industry. It is a platform for worldwide co-operation and the sharing of know-how between its 2,500 members from some 80 countries. It provides information, research and analysis on all aspects of public transport including infrastructure, rolling stock, organisation and management. UITP has worked with cities around the world on the benchmarking of passenger transport services through the Millennium Cities Database, currently followed by the Mobility in Cities Database project. It also co-ordinates the VOYAGER Thematic Network which hosts the ELTIS website containing best practice case studies in local transport across Europe.
Transport & Travel Research Ltd (TTR) is a UK-based transport consultancy company established for 12 years. TTR has been involved in many EC programmes and projects, often as project manager or evaluation manager, and is currently involved in a number of relevant EC projects such as the CUPID Thematic Network on road pricing and VIVALDI (a CIVITAS project). TTR undertakes research into all aspects of local transport policy, especially innovative measures such as air quality management, mobility management and road pricing.
The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) is a non-advocacy, not-for-profit organisation with a mission to assist in solving environmental problems in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The Center fulfils its mission through encouraging cooperation among non-governmental organisations, governments and businesses, supporting the free exchange of information and promoting public participation in environmental decision-making. The REC was established in 1990 by the United States, the European Commission and Hungary
