Final Report Summary - MOBIDAYS (Sustainable mobility days) The MOBIDAYS project carried out an analysis of the projects on sustainable transport, in particular focusing on the EC funded projects, so the knowledge developed as part of the project consists in information on the relevant projects and their outcomes. At the start of the project MOBIDAYS, a working definition of sustainable transport was elaborated by the consortium. This definition is reported in all the brochures written inside MOBIDAYS and was used when assessing EC-funded projects and their impact on sustainability of road transport. Sustainable mobility is such if supports the simultaneous achievement of long-term economic growth, social welfare and environmental protection. This translates into a number of policy objectives that a sustainable transport system, in the EU and elsewhere, has to simultaneously contribute to. The criteria for the project selection process were:i) their research relevance for the topic (socioeconomic barriers to sustainable mobility); ii) respect of the research audience for the project team; iii) published outputs of the relevant EU funded projects. One limitation that at the same time served as a selection criterion was the possibility to get information about the project in the public domain (project web pages, published articles in scientific journals, etc.). From about 250 projects, 46 projects were selected, which were referred to in the brochure on 'European research on socio-economic barriers to sustainable mobility'. Nine projects were presented at the Prague conference. The conference on socioeconomic barriers to sustainable transport took place on 18 June 2007 in the Charles University headquarters, Ovocny trh 3, Prague. The conference was organised by the Charles University Environment Centre in Prague. The aim of the conference was to introduce European projects on the selected socioeconomic barriers to sustainable transport, their main findings and recommendations. Simultaneously, problems observed during the implementation of these projects and the possibility of their overcoming was discussed. The economic aspects of sustainable mobility included competitiveness and economic development aspects, comprising the following topics: -direct and external costs of transport; -transport investment appraisal; -regulation of transport services; -transport infrastructure pricing; -drivers of demand for transport; -links between transport, -land-use planning and regional development; -development of scenarios and evaluation of policies. The social aspects dealt mainly with equity and accessibility issues, meaning that the benefits of transport strategies should be distributed reasonably equally (social inclusion) and various facilities (employment, shopping, leisure, etc.) are easy to reach. The conference was dominated by two prominent themes - assessment of transport trends and impacts, and breaking dependence on oil. Particularly, results of research and demonstration projects from the Fifth and Sixth Research Technological Development and Demonstration Framework Programme (RTD FP) were presented. The 'research on vehicles for sustainable mobility' section of the London conference dealt with sustainable vehicles. Starting off with the database compiled by the MOBIDAYS consortium, the IST further worked to find projects connected with the vehicle innovation and individualised the 170 projects reported in the MOBIDAYS brochure on vehicle projects classified in the following way: - conventional internal combustion engines (diesel and gasoline; alternative fuels); - new combustion modes;- hybrid electric vehicles;- fuel cell vehicles (fuel cell stacks and related technologies, integration and applications to road vehicles);- new materials and manufacturing processes;- vehicle noise;- vehicle safety;- new vehicle design concepts urban mobility. The conference brought together researchers working on various in-vehicle technologies aimed at achieving sustainability in transport. Key outcomes of a selection of EC-funded projects were presented by the invited speakers, as the way to stimulate the discussion among all participants on what these projects have achieved, what their practical applications have been, what their pitfalls are, and what priorities should be set for future research and demonstration activities in the EU. The emphasis has been put on advances of powertrain technologies towards zero and near-zero emissions; including hybrid-electric architectures combined with either fuel cells, or internal combustion engines with innovative low emission combustion modes and multi-fuel capabilities. Speakers were invited in a personal basis, after the general coordinator of MOBIDAYS has sent a general invitation to a wide mailing list of coordinators of European funded projects. The half-day conference on 'Infrastructures for sustainable mobility' took place at Imperial College, London, United Kingdom on 21 September 2007. It was funded by the EC under the SSA MOBIDAYS 'Sustainable mobility days', and entirely organised by Imperial College. The conference on 'Infrastructures for sustainable mobility' was aimed at reviewing achievements and shortfalls of EC-funded research in the area of infrastructures for the production, transmission and delivery of alternative road transport fuels. The idea was to select the most significant projects in the area, invite speakers from organisations participating in these projects to report on their main results and discuss the latter with the public attending the conference. The MOBIDAYS database of projects was also used to circulate information on the conference to relevant people and to invite coordinators of completed and ongoing projects to fill out a questionnaire and to participate in the conference as speakers presenting results of their projects. Coordinators of the 32 selected projects were specifically targeted in all cases where their contact details were available. The final selection of projects to be presented at the conference was based on a number of elements, the overarching criteria being that of covering as broadly as possible the topic of infrastructures for sustainable mobility within the limited time available. For this reason, projects presented at the conference included one which dealt with different types of infrastructures for sustainable mobility being implemented in various European cities (project NICHES), a major hydrogen infrastructure project (project ZERO REGIO) and three projects covering the most important biofuels currently being deployed, respectively bio-ethanol (project NILE), biogas (project BIOGASMAX) and biodiesel (project INNOVATIVE BIODIESEL). The conference sessions were chaired by hydrogen and bioenergy experts from Imperial College, and a panel discussion was also organised at the end in order to further stimulate discussion with the public. The third and final MOBIDAYS conference took place in Rome on 7 November, 2007. It dealt with large-scale demonstration projects on sustainable mobility in Europe and worldwide. The conference aimed to provide the opportunity to disseminate and discuss the results achieved, the main goals reached and the problems still to be solved in large-scale European and non-European demonstration projects. It was also an opportunity to compare Europe with US and Japan. The conference started with a presentation of the European Investment Bank dealing with the urban transport projects and the new financing instruments. Then, the conference was dedicated to European projects from the Fourth to Sixth Framework Programmes and gave some space to the industry. To compare the European experience with the Asian and the American one, a specific topic had been selected: the hydrogen fleets have been realising in the world. Finally, the final reports from the previous conferences about: 1) sustainable vehicles, 2) socioeconomic barriers and 3) infrastructure have been presented. In addition, during the conference four interviews to the speakers and other three ones to the MOBIDAYS partners were carried out in the press room and they were published on the H2roma website. The MOBIDAYS consortium has been proposing some solutions the EC could implement. In particular, the CORDIS database could be improved and systematically linked to the other relevant tools developed by the EC. In addition, a new database could be built which for all relevant projects collects data, models, tools developed, deliverable reports and, the 'Plan for using and disseminating the knowledge'. In order to address the problem of keeping track of the commercial exploitation of technologies originally developed as part of EC-funded projects, the introduction of a labelling scheme could be considered. Related documents Final Report - MOBIDAYS (Sustainable mobility days)
