Workshop to define the European Action Plan for ITS deployment

Creation date: 06 March 2009

Rome, 26th February 2009. On the 19th of February,  in Rome a workshop was held, with more than 60 participants, organized by TTS Italia, the Italian ITS Association; Federmobilità, the Association for the local institutions dealing with mobility; AssoAutomazione, the Italian Association for Automation and Measure and a Confindustria ANIE confederate; and by Astral, the Region Lazio Roads Company, to present the content of the Action Plan for the deployment of ITS, approved by the European Commission on the 16th of December 2008, and of the related Proposal for a Directive.

The main objective of the Action Plan, composed by 6 areas of intervention, is to accelerate and coordinate the deployment of ITS for road transport, also including interfaces with the other modes of transport, to make transport cleaner, safer and more efficient. The related Proposal will attempt to create a framework to generate more favorable conditions for a rapid and well coordinated development of ITS systems.

The workshop, moderated by Paolo Cremonesi, managing editor of Radio Rai 1, was opened by Enrico Mingardi, Vice-President of Federmobilità. He marked the constant commitment of Federmobilità to support and stimulate the collaboration among the actors dealing with technologies for mobility. Then Emilio Cera, Chairman of TTS Italia Technical- Scientific Committee explained the most important aspects of the Action Plan, underlining the pioneer role of TTS Italia who presented a Proposal for an ITS Strategic Plan in Italy to National Institutions on December 2007.

After this, it was the time for the intervention of Roberto Carattoli (ElsagDatamat) on instruments and management of traffic data; of Roberto Moro (AssoAutomazione) on ITS interoperability for traffic and freight; of Maurizio Coppo (National Council for Road Safety) who insisted on the important contribution given by Action Plan measures for a road safety improvement.

ITS, new technologies for transport from traffic lights, to GPS systems and on-board active devices as well, are considered essential instruments for a cleaner, safer and more efficient mobility at European level and they represent the future of the mobility. This was confirmed by the following interventions. Paola Carrea's (Magneti Marelli) intervention was focused on vehicle-infrastructure-user integration, and on the importance of a major coordination on Infomobility and Road Safety initiatives at National level. Adriana Elena (Astral) told the experience of the Region Lazio Roads Company; Paolo Giorgi (Autostrade per l’Italia)) told about cooperation and coordination on ITS systems for motorways, showing Tutor technology results (50% reduction in deaths on the involved motorways sectors) and telepass diffusion (more than 6.000.000 users) for motorways toll.

TTS Italia, the Italian ITS Association, , was funded in March 1999 to promote the deployment of ITS Systems in Italy. It puts together organizations, both public and private, involved with ITS systems development and implementation.

For further information:
redazione@ttsitalia.it