Project R-5327

SMART-PT: Smart Adaptive Public Transport (Research)

Promotion of sustainable mobility has become a major goal in Europe aimed at rationalizing the exploitation of natural resources and reducing the environmental impacts of mobility. Continuously raising congestion levels are the cradle for an evolution towards a more sustainable transportation. It is clear that current developments in ICT can contribute to this objective, however at this moment the possibilities of ICT are not fully utilized in the public transit sector. Research has shown that ICT is mainly being used to make a fixed transit system more efficient, but the transit system itself is never questioned. The added value of the ERA-NET proposal is to reverse this point of view. How can ICT contribute to the development of a flexible transit network which is self-adaptive towards the changing demand? This SMART-PT (Smart Adaptive Public Transport) ERA-NET proposal is an extension to the ongoing SBO-project "ORDERin'F - Organizing Rhizomic Development along a Regional pilot network in Flanders". The scientific objectives of the onging ORDERin'F project concentrates on the following basic questions: 1° Is it possible to design a performing regional pilot transport network within the strongly fragmented spatial structure of Flanders that enhances significant long term economic, social and environmental benefits for the society at large? 2° Can this regional network of public transport act as a lever to restructure the suburbanized spatial structure of Flanders in the long term? The two questions add up to the basic research hypothesis: can a performing, and specifically designed network of regional public transport work as a catalyst for a sustainable spatial structure and mobility in a diluted settlement pattern as the one we know in Flanders? The additional research question in the current SMART-PT, ERA-NET proposal is: How can we evolve to a smart and evolutionary public transport system which adapts its services to the changing end-user demand and how can this contribute tot the development of a high quality network for access and egress transportation?

01 July 2014 - 31 December 2016