TANGENT: a new EU-funded project to improve traffic operations
A 4.8 million euro innovation project funded by the European Commission aims at develop new complementary tools for optimising traffic operations in a coordinated and dynamic way. The project, TANGENT, will help participating cities achieve a 10% reduction travel time, 8-10% reduction in CO2 emissions, 5% reduction of accidents, 10-15% increase in use of public transport.
The project, funded by the European Commission DG MOVE, started in September 2021 and will end in August 2024. TANGENT is coordinated by Universidad de Deusto / Deustuko Unibertsitatea, based in Bilbao, Spain.
The project aims to develop new complementary tools for optimising traffic operations in a coordinated and dynamic way from a multimodal perspective, taking into consideration automated/non-automated vehicles, passengers, and freight transport. TANGENT will allow the knowledge and management of the mobility flows among the transport modes and will enable the implementation and integration of innovative mobility solutions, services, and business models. The project will contribute to make traffic management more efficient, by reducing congestion, mitigate environmental effects through CO2 reduction, increase safety and economic advantage.
Transport major challenge
The European transport faces major challenges in terms of safety, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic congestion and its derived costs. It currently accounts for about a third of all climate emissions in Europe. Without significant measures, transport will be the largest source of climate gas emissions by 2030. It is expected that passenger on European roads will grow by more than 40%, by 2050. With the COVID-19 pandemic, massive shifts in transport patterns are occurring overnight, intensifying transport related challenges in cities.
Barriers
Despite the high availability of transport data, the exchange of information, the cooperation, and the synchronization between different transport modes (rail, road, air, water; surface transport vs air) is still low. As a result, there is a lack of coordination between supply & demand from a multimodal perspective and the efficiency of the overall transport system is not optimised. The response to events needs to be improved, enhancing the resilience of the overall transport network to foreseen and unforeseen events/disruptions affecting transport infrastructure and operations.
Testing and upscaling
TANGENT approach and methodology will be tested in three case studies: Rennes (FR), Lisbon (PT), Great Manchester (UK) and a virtual case study in Athens (HE) with real data from various modes of transport, under different traffic events such as bottlenecks, accidents, pedestrian flows etc.
A Kick-off meeting was held on the 6th and 7th of September 2021, initiating project activities, and presenting all consortium partners.
The consortium is composed by local authorities and public transport operators from the three cities, stakeholders’ associations, research intensive technology companies in transport and mobility solutions, consultancies and research institutes specialised on transport planning and traffic management. The project partners are: AIMSUN, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Rupprecht Consult, CEFRIEL, ID4CAR, Rennes Metropole, ATOBE, Transport for Greater Manchester, Panteia, POLIS.
Facts
- TANGENT has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, Grant Agreement No 955273.
- The budget amounts to 4.8 mill. euro.
- TANGENT started in September 2021 and will run over 3 years.
- The partners represent seven European countries: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom.
- The cities involved are Lisbon, Great Manchester, Rennes, Athens.
Contacts
Project Coordinator | Leire Serrano: email leire.serrano@deusto.es, mobile 94 413 90 03
Communications Manager | Raffaele Vergnani: email RVergnani@polisnetwork.eu, mobile +32 2 500 56 71
