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On 9 June, the FIA Smart Cities Forum took place in Zurich with the theme “Smart Data for Shaping the Cities of Tomorrow”. Started in 2017, the forum aims to encourage stakeholders to address concerns such as pollution, congestion and road safety and bring potential solutions to these problems with regards to urban mobility.
The event in Zurich discussed how to make the best use of data to analyse and improve urban transportation. The discussion was opened by Peter Goetschi, President of the Touring Club Suisse with keynote speakers such as David Zipper, Resident Fellow of the Urban and Regional Policy Program of the German Marshall Fund, Karen Vancluysen, Secretary General of Polis and Nathan Borgford-Parnell, Science Affairs Officer at the Climate and Clean Air Coalition of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
As one of the main topics of the discussion, electromobility was presented as a solution to improve urban mobility. Highlighting the benefits of electromobility, the ELVITEN project featured lightweight electric vehicles as alternatives for daily commuting.
The ELVITEN stand featured two Electric Light Vehicles (EL-Vs) provided by Kyburz. The fully electric vehicles are suitable for both professional and private transport. These types of vehicles, together with e-bikes and e-scooters will be showcased during a nine-months of demonstrations that will be organised in six cities around Europe. FIA Region I is a project partner of ELVITEN, which is funded under Horizon 2020. The project is working to encourage European citizens to use alternative and clean means of transportation for urban transportation.
In order to reach the project’s objectives, FIA Region I carried out a public survey to collect data on citizens’ attitudes towards EL-Vs. Around 7,400 answers were collected from road users in Rome, Bari, Genoa, Malaga, Berlin and Trikala. The project has been organising round tables and workshops in each city to evaluate usage schemes and how to approach local stakeholders.
The FIA Region I is also leading an awareness campaign that will target users in the different project locations and that aims to inform them about the use and functionalities of EL-Vs. The campaign also encourages citizens to join public demonstrations of Electric Light Vehicles, scheduled to start in November 2018.
