Brussels, 22/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission may soon act to ensure that the intelligent transport system (ITS) becomes more competitive by doing everything possible to rapidly bring about an intermodal and pan-European journey planning system. The European commissioner responsible for transport, Siim Kallas, touched on the subject when opening the international conference on ITS in Vienna on Monday 22 October.
The commissioner announced that the Commission's aim is to have many competing services that meet the needs of users and make transport systems more resistant and more effective. The ITS directive, adopted in 2010, provides more specifically for the setting in place of an intermodal and pan-European journey planner in 2014. Work on this, however, may be speeded up. Siim Kallas explains in this respect that the Commission's role is to establish a framework that is propitious for the emergence of competitive solutions. That, he announced, is why in coming weeks they will present concrete steps for setting that framework in place. The commissioner is well aware of the fact that, despite the ITS directive, there are still technical, legal or organisational problems that do not allow applications to facilitate the mobility of Europeans, including this journey planner. He acknowledges it is difficult to gain access to data on transport, that there are legal uncertainties regarding data protection, and that standardised interfaces are lacking for making existing solutions interoperable. Although the Commission cannot create products or solutions from start to finish, it can nonetheless establish an ideal framework for facilitating their development, the commissioner summed up. At the conference in Vienna, the Commission rewarded the winners of its “Smart Mobility Challenge” competition for the design of journey planners.
The commissioner also confirmed that the first specifications arising from the ITS directive should be adopted by the end of the year. Work has also begun on other specifications, mainly on parking areas for heavy goods vehicles. (MD/transl.jl)