November 6, 2019

The MED Urban Transports Community Final Event

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17-18 September 2019 Malaga, Spain: sharing challenges & developing solutions to design the future of the med urban transports community

IMG_8040On the 17th and 18th of September, the MED Urban Transport Community held its final event, bringing to a close three years of project. This thematic community composed of 7 modular projects started in November 2016, driven by the lead partner Malaga City Council, together with the other partners MedCities, CODATU, UNIMED, EUROCITIES, REC first and then RDA Green Karst  and with the involvement in a second phase of BIC Euronova.

The final conference has been the occasion to celebrate the past three years of successful cooperation and positive impact. The event started on 17 September with technical visits.

The first visit took place in the Integrated Traffic Control Centre to see the way it works and the objective it aims at achieving, namely to improve the traffic flow, by means of implementing advanced traffic control tools focused on reducing stop-and-go traffic, reducing and/or adapting average speed, and maximizing the reduction of emissions through traffic control (NOx, PM10).

The second visit was made to the ZEM2ALL Show Room, which was a ground-breaking initiative in Malaga aimed at offering individuals and businesses access to e-mobility. The 198 e-vehicles included in the project now operating in Malaga have avoided the emission of over 200 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere compared to using conventional combustion-engine vehicles.

After the technical visits, the Community has been hosted by Mr. Francisco de la Torre, Mayor of Malaga, for an official visit in which he welcomed the MED Urban Transports Community and presented the city of Malaga, its Mediterranean identity and the importance of cooperation with the rest of the Mediterranean basin.

The presentations of the second day provided an overview of the past and future of the community. On that day, an intense session was dedicated to Policy recommendations at European, National, Regional and Local levels, in which the participants, divided in 4 groups, discussed about these  key outputs of the MED Urban Transport community. In fact, these recommendations support the transition towards sustainable urban mobility in the MED area.

The final session of the conference has been an Experts Round Table, moderated by Josep Canals Molina, General Secretary of MedCities, focussing on how to increase the impact of the Med Urban Transports Community results in the future of SUMPs. The participants of this round table came from different administrative levels.

– Mr. Ivo Cré, POLIS Director Policy & Projects
– Mr. Alvaro Nicolás-Loscos, former Advisor for the Mobility Councillor at Barcelona City Council
– Mrs. Soledad Perlado Hergueta, Technical Advisor, Ministry for Ecological Transition and National Coordinator of the Mobility Week
– Mr. José Luis Martín, President of Ruedas Redondas Association Malaga

Outdoor exhibitions, organized within the framework of a marketplace designed for each community project, allowed further  information to be provided to the participants about the project. It also allowed to illustrate the project’s results, sided by musicians and parallel outdoor initiatives (among them “sustainable camping tents”). This event closed the work of the first phase of the MED Urban Transports Community.

Original source available here for further information.