The integration of intelligent transport systems in urban transport

Abstract

The global increase of mobility – especially in cities – and continuing climate change necessitates the decarbonisation of the transport system, the enhancement of the energy efficiency of transport and the implementation of innovative transport solutions. But the continuously growing volume of traffic can also result in congestion, air pollution and collapsed traffic systems, caused by fast growing populations, the lack of city planning and low financial budgets. An approach for managing traffic in urban areas is an intelligent transport system (ITS); especially large cities are forerunners for such solutions. At the same time, large events provide an opportunity to develop, implement and evaluate innovative transport solutions. The growing interest in international events like football championships, the Olympic Games or exhibitions require high-performance transport solutions and traffic concepts due to the large number of participants. In consequence of the international attention, for prestige purposes and not least the financial background, large events are drivers of sustainable developments in transport. The focus of the current paper lies on new ITS solutions in the cities of Cape Town, Delhi and London. All three cities are part of the EU-funded project STADIUM (Smart Transport Applications Designed for large events with Impacts on Urban Mobility) which aims at improving the performance of transport services and systems made available for large events hosted by big cities. The project demonstrates ITS applications at three events: the FIFA Soccer World Cup (2010) in South Africa, the Commonwealth Games (2010) in India and the Summer Olympics (2012) in London.