More than 2,200 delegates from 83 countries and 284 exhibitors from across the industry (attracting more than 15,000 single-entry visitors to the Exhibition) gathered in the Italian city of Milan and the mood was one of ambition faced with the challenges of: financing; the arrival of new mobility services; infrastructure needs in smart and growing cities; the impact on cities of new vehicle and IT technologies and focusing on customer service.
The plenary session meanwhile demonstrated the drive within the sector to continue developing the market share of public transport and shone a light on some of the successful urban policies that are already bearing fruit in some major cities, such as Vienna, Oslo, London, Paris and Geneva. Successful measures to control urban sprawl and reduce private car transport in these cities led to an increase in public transport modal share of more than 20%.
In a reflection of the increasing complementarity between public transport and other sectors CEOs from the likes of SNCF (Guillaume Pepy), Trenitalia (Vincenzo Soprano), Arriva (David Martin), Transdev (Jean-Marc Janaillac), Keolis (Jean-Pierre Farandou), RTA (Matter Al Tayer), LTA (Chew Men Leong), MTR (Lincoln Kwok Kuen Leong), TfL (Sir Peter Hendy), Jordanian Transport Minister (H.E. Dr. Lina Shbeeb), CasaTransports (Youseff Draiss), RATP (Elisabeth Borne), RATP Dev (François-Xavier Perin), Iveco Bus (Sylvain Blaise) and Evobus (Hartmut Schick) rubbed shoulders with the likes of policy watchers, bureaucrats and technology trendsetters including both Uber and Moovit not to mention, for the very first time, a selection of city leaders from the likes of Montreal, Brussels, Johannesburg, Milan and Turin.
With the closing of the event came other news: to reflect what is already the biggest event in public transport’s growth in stature, the World Congress & Exhibition will become the ‘Global Public Transport Summit’ in time for the next edition in 2017 in Montreal: the same event but with even larger ambitions.
“The diversity of the attendees at this World Congress & Exhibition reflects both the buoyancy of the sector and its increasing overlap with other sectors,” said UITP Secretary General Alain Flausch. “With our new President, Mr. Masaki Ogata from JR East, now at the helm as we look towards the next edition in Montreal, we hope to continue to build on this optimism and see public transport in even ruder health in two years’ time”.
Winners of the UITP Awards 2015:
Public Transport Strategy:
FEDERAÇAO DAS EMPRESAS DE TRANSPORTES DE PASSAGEIROS DO ESTADO DO RIO DE JANEIRO – FETRANSPOR (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), for the project ‘Reshaping mobility demand in Rio with a BRT network’. Recognition for the completion of two BRT lines by 2014 and the 157km BRT network by 2016, based on a long-term strategy which will allow the city to meet the challenge of a growing economy and demographics in the years to come.
Customer Experience:
WIENER STADTWERKE & CO KG (Vienna, Austria), for the project ‘SMILE – Smart Mobility Info & Ticketing System Leading the Way for Effective E-Mobility Services’. Recognition for its innovative integrated mobility platform open for all types of mobility services. It offers a unique mobility service to customers through integrating different mobility services with public transport and they can immediately book and pay. Built on a strong partnership of the key actors of the sector it offers integrated real time information, booking and ticketing.
Operational and Technical Excellence:
TRANSPORT FOR LONDON, BARCLAYCARD, CUBIC (London, UK), for the project ‘Acceptance of contactless payment cards for Pay as you go travel on London’s public transport network’. Recognition for their contribution to the deployment of contactless payment cards in London, contributing to more efficient operations, increased customer satisfaction and decreased costs related to revenue collection. The negotiation of the transit transaction model and the ability of the system to support the local transport smartcard (Oyster), the national transport smartcard (ITSO) and contactless payment cards are among the most remarkable achievements.
Design:
SOLARIS BUS & COACH S.A. (Owinska, Poland), for the project ‘The new Solaris Urbino’. Recognition for the original exterior style and carefully designed interior details of the new Solaris Urbino, a standard bus that enhances the customer experience. The new Solaris Urbino is the result of an outstanding design management process.
Mobility Demand Management:
LAND TRANSPORT AUTHORITY (Singapore), for the project ‘Travel Smart Programme’.
Recognition for its comprehensive demand management programme that encourages commuters to re-time their trips to off-peak periods, re-mode, and to reduce travel demand altogether by taking advantage of financial incentives, rewards and gaming. These complement supply-side measures to increase transport capacity.
Smart Financing and Business Model:
KAYSERY ULASIM (Kayseri, Turkey), for the project ‘Innovative Financing of Public Transport’. Recognition for its ability to diversify revenues and open up to alternatives sources of financing, in this case tunnelling revenues from fines and creating additional revenues from the rental of fibre optics deployed on its network. With these new revenues KAYSERY covered 13% of its expenditure with alternative funding methods in 2014.
Y4PT Youth Award:
TRANSPORTES DE LISBOA/ METROPOLITANO DE LISBOA (Lisbon, Portugal), for the project ‘Public Transport Campaign in University Campuses’. Recognition for its commitment to instill a new sustainable mobility culture among younger generations and to enlighten young people as to the long-term socio-economic advantages of public transport. The ‘Public Transport Campaign on University campuses’ has a large potential for implementation elsewhere as it is part of CIVITAS.
