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SUITS project organised the Multiplier Workshop: Building capacity and resilience in small and medium cities – Deploying SUITS transferable tools for sustainable mobility, on Friday 2nd October 2020, 11:30 – 13:00CET, at the Urban Mobility Days 2020, Digital Conference.

New DATES! Call for papers; Special issue: Gender, Employment and Transport

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SUITS is organising a Multiplier Workshop: Building capacity and resilience in small and medium cities – Deploying SUITS transferable tools for sustainable mobility, on Friday 2nd October 2020, 11:30 – 13:00CET.

Register here and select to join us in the Multiplier Workshop!

Read SUITS Policy brief 4: Organizational Resilience. How SUITS’ local authorities were prepared to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic

Valencia city, partner of SUITS project, has been selected as one of the 12 finalists to the contest EU Capital of Innovation.

 Please fill in the form  to show your support to Valencia’s nomination as EU Capital of Innovation!

SUITS Capacity Building Toolbox was published today in Eltis website.

Brussels’ city SUMP conceives the city as an ecosystem, and in parallel has put in place an impressive participation system;

The Commission is working on a comprehensive Strategy for a Sustainable and Smart Mobility. Have your say!

There is wide recognition that the transport sector is heavily male dominated. Where figures do exist, on average, globally, women form approximately 22% of the workforce.

The SUITS project in cooperation with the FZNUM (Competence Center for Sustainable Urban Mobility of the Federal State of Hesse in Germany) developed and conducted a series of Workshops called SUMP.Academy, dealing with different topics and challenges of sustainable mobility planning.

A SUITS scientific paper; Freight distribution in urban areas: A method to select the most important loading and unloading areas and a survey tool to investigate related demand patterns, Marco, Diana, Miriam Pirra, Andree Woodcock; is now published in open access mode, at the European Transport Review, Special Issue “Highlights of the Transport Research Arena conference”.

SUITS Consortium held its Plenary Meeting on 27th-28th May 2020, @ virtual space.

The European Commission has announced the winners of four sustainable mobility awards:

The SUITS webinar “on data management and exploitation for sustainable urban mobility”, took place on May 05, 2020, 14:00 CET.   

You can watch the webinar here!

European commission has launched a public consultation inviting citizens and organisations to contribute to the assessment of how to increase the EU 2030 emission reduction ambition in a responsible way.

A new app to facilitate the movement of goods and freight within the EU in support of the COVID-19 pandemic response, is the result of the collaboration between the European GNSS Agency (GSA) with the European Commission (EC). The “Galileo Green Lane” app will ease the flow of freight through borders and enable the efficient transit of critical goods.

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a considerable impact on countries across the globe. The coronavirus outbreak is a serious threat to public health. Lockdowns and other coordinated restrictive measures are necessary to save lives. However, these measures

DG MOVE invites stakeholders to give their thoughts on Activities 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 of the new working programme of the ITS Directive, related to the possible revision of Delegated Regulation No 2015/962 (real-time traffic information services).

Participate on the survey here!

The SUITS webinar “on data management and exploitation for sustainable urban mobility”, will advocate crowdsourcing as a sustainable and low-cost method to acquire mobility data and it will present a data modeling approach to minimize traffic delays. It will also discuss approaches to effectively handle the potentially “big data” that may result from the proposed data collection methodologies.

Participate on the Evaluation Survey of the Directive on the Deployment of Alternative Fuels Infrastructure, which it can be accessed here. The survey will be available in an additional 11 languages shortly. The survey is expected to remain open for responses until Thursday 26th March 2020.

Prof. Andree Woodcock, the SUITS project Coordinator, is the newest Council Member of the European Network of Living Labs. Prof. Woodcock has a remarkable background and will bring a new perspective on transport and gender inclusivity issues to the Council table.

The Welsh Highways Conference 2020 took place at Cardiff, on 30th January 2020.

SUITS project was presented to more than 400 conference participants.

City of Coventry, as SUITS project partner has implemented innovative transport measures, including autonomous electric cars.

Sunil Budhdeo from the City of Coventry, was invited to the ELASTIC (A Software Architecture for Extreme-ScaLe Big-Data AnalyticS in Fog CompuTIng Ecosystems) project meeting, on 23rd January 2020, as Member of the Industrial Advisory Board for exchanging experiences and know-how; an excellent opportunity for the project to collect useful feedback.

The International Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning (SUMP), took place on November 15, 2019 in Beijing. It was organised by GIZ GmbH. At the conference, SUMP updated guidelines were introduced and participants debated the applicability of the SUMP concept in China.

The SUITS project had a three days project plenary meeting in Alba Iulia, Romania, on 10-12 December 2019. On 10th December, the Implementation of the Behavioral change workshop was organized. The cities’ representatives highlighted the best examples of quick wins during the change implementation in local authorities and defined the lessons learnt from the whole organizational behavioral process.

The 2019 OUTLOOK Conference took place at Crown Melbourne on Southbank, from 27-29 November 2019. Parking Australia’s OUTLOOK Conference brings together delegates from across all sectors of parking to learn about new technologies and developments.

Under the title “Your opinion matters!” and it actually does, a set of Sustainable Travel and Public Awareness Surveys for seven European cities was launched in November 2019, currently running until the beginning of December 2019. Each city developed the survey at the national language.

Evidence is there!

SUITS can show success in implementing transport strategies and measures for sustainable mobility within local authorities

The 1st SUITS Multiplier Workshop: National and Urban Mobility Policy and Planning, took place in Berlin, on 11th November 2019. A number of forty stakeholders actively participated and contributed to the workshop aims.

Your opinion matters…..

Sustainable Travel in the West Midlands and public awareness is the key question for the survey launched. The SUITS project wishes to learn more about what people think about sustainable transport and mobility in their region and the effect of any local measures to improve it. The survey closes on 23rd November 2019.
Take now this quick online survey and you could win one of two £25 Amazon vouchers*.

__________

*There is a Prize Draw of two £25 Amazon vouchers on offer, to take place after the survey closes on 23rd November.

For the first time the Young ITS Professional of the Year was awarded in the name of former ITS (UK) Chairman Eric Sampson. It was handed to Keelan Fadden-Hopper of Transport for West Midlands who, the ceremony heard, has a passion for transport, shown by his willingness

During the CIVITAS Forum 2019 SUITS project presented the SUITS Capacity Building Program  a suite of learning materials for decision makers and planners in small and medium sized cities to address knowledge gaps and misconceptions

The 5th Newsletter of SUITS project was published on September 30, 2019.

Click on “Read More..“ to view the online version or here to download the file.

On 19th September, West Midlands Combined Authority hosted a visit from the Indian Smart Cities mission, led by Dr Greg Marsden of the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds. A day discussion related to the work

The SUITS project will be represented by Prof. Ann-Marie Nienaber, to the CAPITAL Final Event “Creating a smart City” Public Authority Training Day, providing insights at the behavioural change side. The one-day event will take place in Rome, Italy on 25th September 2019.

The SUITS project is hosted to the Open Access Government press.

Prof. Andree Wookcock, Project Manager of the SUITS project, was interviewed and the article “Developing and Implementing sustainable and accessible transport strategies” is published.

The CIVITAS Forum Conference 2019 will be held in Graz, Austria, from 2-4 October 2019. The 17th edition of Europe’s top sustainable urban mobility event will gather the leading figures in the field from across the continent and beyond.

On the 9th July 2019, Coventry City Council and TfWM were invited at the TaaS Technology Conference by the Organising Committee.
The team presented to all UK transport Authorities its innovative projects, exchanged views and experiences about innovative technologies’ introduction implemented in a number of UK cities.
Additionally, Coventry city shared the insights from SUITS project in conjunction with the connected autonomous shared electric vehicles initiative with the UK transport Authorities.
Further meetings have been decided to share knowledge and good practices with the wider community across the rest of the Metropolitan boroughs in line with the SUITS Project outcomes.

The TRIMIS team interviewed Professor Andree Woodcock, Project Manager of the Civitas SUITS project.

What is the objective of SUITS – Supporting Urban Integrated Transport Systems project?

SUITS is a research and innovation project. It adopts a sociotechnical approach to developing capacity in small-and medium-sized local authorities. It will share best practice from larger and medium sized authorities, providing tools and methods which will help small-and medium-sized cities increase their capacity to plan, finance and implement sustainable transport measures and create new business opportunities. Its aim is to transform transport departments into resilient, learning organisations able to meet future challenges and lead sustainable transport innovation in their cities.

The 6th European Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans took place on Monday 17 and Tuesday 18 June 2019 in Groningen, the Netherlands. The focus of the conference was on providing support to sustainable and active cities within the SUMP context, i.e. how to make cities more walkable and cycle-friendly.

SUITS project was present and participated with a dissemination stand for the project’s results and in parallel three presentations on behalf of SUITS project, were delivered:

• Frederic Rudolph, Wuppertal Institut, Germany – “Public procurement of sustainable urban mobility measures”
• Sebastian Spundflasch, Ilmenau University of Technology, Germany – “Real challenges experienced by small-medium authorities and solutions”
• Andree Woodcock, Coventry University, UK – “SUMP Guide on Social Impact Assessment”

The SUITS project held its 6th General Assembly Meeting in Stuttgart, Germany, from 21st May – 23rd May 2019. A very productive meeting, with insights in Stuttgart’s sustainable urban solutions. The first day was dedicated to a tentative workshop where city partners reviewed work in progress and fine-tuned the planned activities for the next six months. The next two days, the SUITS Consortium was focused on the work related to the capacity building program for small medium cities on planning and implementing sustainable mobility plans. Stuttgart city presented the sustainable plan of the city and the way that adopted European best practices are implemented at the city.

Check out the photo story of the SUITS 6th General Assembly Meeting in Stuttgart!

The 4th SUITS e-Newsletter was published on May 21, 2019.

Click on “Read More..” to view the online version, or here to download the file.

West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), partner at the SUITS project, was one of the four facilitators for the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) training event, with examples of good and bad practice to help the audience understand the practical processes of MaaS.

Representatives of the CONTACT group came together to create the event to help local authorities to really understand ‘the nuts and bolts’ of how to implement MaaS in their area. The event was been made possible through sponsorship from Innovate UK & Jacobs.  The representatives of the CONTACT group that are supporting this event were Innovate UK, TDI, ITS UK, The IET, KTN, Jacobs & MCAV.

The SUITS webinar is designed to build and/or strengthen the capacity of small-medium cities’ Local Authorities to to introduce innovative transport schemes, i.e car-sharing, ridesharing (carpooling – vanpooling), bike – sharing, MaaS etc. The webinar is tailored to the needs of local authorities of small-medium cities and especially staff from the transport planning, strategical urban planning, urban development and procurement departments.

It will take place on June 13, 2019, 2:30 PM CEST. A prior registration is essential. If you are interested, please register here.

The Municipality of Kalamaria, partner of the SUITS Project, organized on 20^th March 2019, a stakeholders’ workshop focusing on “Sustainable urban freight transport: addressing modern era challenges, with the involvement of stakeholders and the support of the SUITS project for Urban Sustainable Mobility”. The event was held in the Municipal Council Hall of the city of Kalamaria and was organized under the activities of the SUITS project.

As part of the SUMP 2.0 process to revise the Guidelines, an event was held on 12 December 2018, in Brussels (Belgium) at the Basque Delegation to the EU. It forms part of ICLEI’s long-running Breakfast at Sustainability’s series. Since their launch in 2013, the EU’s SUMP Guidelines have been the main reference document for developing Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs).

On 19-20 November 2018, the workshop entitled “Building small-medium Local Authorities’ capacity to introduce Innovative Transport Schemes” took place in Birmingham, in the premises of the new SUITS partner ‘Transport for West Midlands’. The aim was to pilot one of the classroom courses that form an integral part of the SUITS Capacity Building program.

The SUITS Conference “Stimulating transport innovation through capacity building in small-medium local authorities” will take place on the 21st November 2018, from 09:00 to 17:30. at the Coventry Transport Museum, in Coventry, UK.

The SUITS 2nd Newsletter was released on July 2018.

Click on “Read More..” to open the online version or click here to download the file.

SUITS partners are conducting a study to understand challenges and opportunities brought by digitalisation, the Internet-of-Things, and big data and implications on data privacy and security. The aim is to help the public sector understand its cyber security and data protection needs, share experiences in outsourcing decisions and identify common problems, open questions and best practices.

SUITS Webinar on financing, procurement and business models for sustainable urban transport, on June 18, 2018 2:30 PM CEST

This webinar will discuss strategies to maximise the effectiveness and sustainability of urban transport measures through new funding models and opportunities for new business models. The webinar will also focus on different options to finance and procure transport measures (covering capital, revenue, and maintenance funding). The webinar is targeted at local authorities (mainly transport and mobility departments) and other stakeholders, whose work focuses to increase the investment efficiency of public and private funds and optimise opportunities to access regional development funds.

The SUITS 1nd e-Newsletter was released in March 2018.

Click on “Read More” to open the online version, or here to download the file.

The European Commission announced this year’s finalists for the SUMP Award and for the European Mobility Week Awards.
Manchester (UK), Milan (Italy) and Turda (Romania) are the three nominees for the 6th Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning award.
Granada (Spain) Prague (Czech Republic) and Vienna (Austria) are the finalists for the European Mobility Week Award.  Igoumenitsa (Greece), Lindau (Germany) and Tivat (Montenegro) have been nominated for the newly introduced award for the European Mobility Week for smaller cities.

Identifying & developing the change vision for cities.

SUITS project has performed an analysis on identifying & developing the change vision for cities. This analysis is based on the “trust questionnaire” which was sent to all cities in the last couple of months/weeks (October-November 2017).

Social Impact Assessments (SIA) are key tools in ensuring that social, cultural and other issues are considered during the planning and implementation of transport measures.The SUITS team is investigating how SIAs are currently undertaken in sustainable transport projects, what factors they should include and how a SIA approach could be used to look at the impact of our project.

SUITS members took part on December 21st, 2017 in the conference “Sustainable Urban Mobility in the Functional Urban Area (FUA) of Alba Iulia Municipality (AIM)”.

Organised in Alba Iulia Municipality premises, the conference assembled in the same conference hall Romanian central and local governments, Public Transport Operators, energy efficiency agencies and others.

SUITS project has issued the 1st Policy Brief, debating on: “Sustainable Urban Mobility in Europe – from Planning to Implementation”.

Questions posed in order to  answer “why?”; cities stipulate SUMPs but then struggle to implement ambitious walking, cycling and other sustainable measures. read more at  SUITS_Policy Brief 1

The SUITS consortium had a three days project plenary meeting in Turin, Italy on 13-15 December 2017. During the first day, the Change Agents workshop was organised; where cities’ representatives exchanged mutual expectations, concerns, ideas and common collaborative tools. The City of Turin organised a study visit “e-bus”for consortium partners. On 14th December, a fine tuning of the project’s current work and planning for the next six months took place. The last day of the meeting two workshops were held, one technical related to project’s data management and for the SUITS training modules.

SUITS project participated in the CIVITAS Forum 2017 in Torres Vedras, Portugal, from 27th – 29th September. CIVITAS Forum 2017 attracted more than 400 participants with contributions to panels, workshops, world cafes and a vivid exchange of ideas for the roadmap to sustainable cities that flourish and prosper.

The SUITS consortium had a two days project meeting in Thessaloniki, Greece on 19-20 June 2017. During the second day, three workshops were organised. The first one focused on the exchange of ideas and experiences between the nine participating cities, the second one on the evaluation of the changes in organisational capacity within the participating cities and the third on technical issues regarding data collection.

SUITS participated in the 4^th European Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans, which took place on 29 – 30 March 2017, in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was an excellent opportunity for SUITS to participate and communicate its aims to the CIVITAS community with more than 400 participants on the Conference and following discussions on the key issues of SUMP implementation in cities.

On month June, Eltis interviewed Prof. Andree Woodcock, the co-ordinator of the CIVITAS SUITS project.

SUITS aim is to substantially increase the capacity of small- and medium-sized local authorities to develop and implement transport strategies and systems, policies, technologies, practices, procedures, tools and measures that are sustainable, inclusive, integrated and accessible. These will recognise the end-to-end travel experiences of all users and freight.

Read more here…

The SUITS project partners gathered in Berlin, Germany on 15-16 December 2016, participating in the 1st SUITS plenary meeting. All partners and city partners were present at the meeting, which was focused on calibrating the implementation of the SUITS project’ s ambitious objectives, for the six-months forthcoming period and fine-tunning partners’ contribution.