EIT Urban Mobility will unleash the potential of public transport in 10 European cities
EIT Urban Mobility is proud to contribute to UPPER, a new EU-funded project to strengthen urban public transportation. UPPER (Unleashing the Potential of Public transport in EuRope) is a 48-month project funded through the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Programme.
The project brings together organisations representing all key actors of the public transport ecosystem. EIT Urban Mobility will contribute by helping UPPER replicate and transfer the project’s results. It will develop a business strategy that will allow participating partners to use UPPER’s results in the long-term.
We need a public transport revolution
Cities are indispensable to achieving the European Green Deal’s goal of climate neutrality by 2050. To accelerate the transition, UPPER is building cooperation among public transport authorities, operators, and users. It offers both a physical and digital space to test new measures, update existing Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), and optimise public transport offerings.
Its current objective is to increase the use of public transport by more than 30% and user satisfaction by more than 25%, leaving no one behind in the process. UPPER is strongly linked to the goals of the Cities Mission in supporting zero-emission mobility.
Implementing 84 measures in 10 cities
UPPER will persuade people to ditch the private car and give public transportation a chance with 84 measures that increase the share of public transportation across different market segments. It will push for greater citizen participation in governance, making sure all types of public transportation users are catered to by decision makers.
In our current climate crisis, we take seriously that 20% of global GHG emissions come from transport. Electrification of private vehicles is not enough to contribute to climate neutrality. Convincing people to change habits and ditch private cars for shared mobility should be about making the entire experience as dependable, positive, safe, and comfortable as possible.
Gareth Macnaughton, Innovation Director at EIT Urban Mobility
These 84 pull and push measures will act on:
- Mindsets and culture
- Urban mobility planning
- The mobility services ecosystem
- Road network management
- Democratic governance
The measures will be tested in the UPPER Living Labs (in Valencia, Rome, Île-de-France, Oslo, and Mannheim) and the UPPER Twinning Cities (in Lisbon, Leuven, Hannover Region, Budapest, and Thessaloniki) and will be adapted to local contexts and objectives. In Rome, UPPER will test the inclusion of new mobility services in multimodal interchange nodes. In Île-de-France, UPPER will test a measure promoting the use of public transport for large events. In Mannheim, UPPER will establish participative governance and dialogue formats to address citizen needs.
UPPER measures will be supported by the UPPER Toolkit (U-TWIN, U-SIM, U-NEED, U-GOV, U-KNOW, U-TRANSFER and U-SUMP), seven IT tools combining social and technological innovation that will be demonstrated in the UPPER Living Labs and Twinning Cities.
Who is part of the UPPER project?
The project gathers a strong consortium of 41 partners from across the public transport sector. It is coordinated by UITP and will run over the course of four years.
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