Niche solutions for a global impact

With the amount of people in cities growing all the time, innovative solutions for increasing the efficiency of transport are becoming crucial in allowing these cities to function smoothly. Ivo Cré and his team have been working on a project to try and formulate and spread the best solutions in this sector.

NICHES+ is an EU funded project which studies and promotes the uptake of the most innovative concepts in urban transport in order to transfer them into mainstream use.

The continual increase of urban traffic and population size has become a major issue in terms of the viability of modern cities, and so there is currently an urgent need to modernise urban transport with regards to accessibility, efficiency and sustainability. The project was born out of trying to get cities more involved in innovation in the field of urban transport, and this has been achieved through promoting a couple of simple but effective measures, or ‘niches’ measures, that have already been successfully and demonstrably implemented in other areas of Europe.

“We need to facilitate the integration of innovation in urban transport for a couple of reasons”, explains Cré. “One of these is financial constraints; not every city has the monetary backing to fund a whole implementation and innovation cycle, and with the current economic climate most cities can ill-afford to get things wrong.

“The other reason is that these solutions need to be being implemented as soon as possible. The problems currently facing cities in terms of economics, transport, the environment and energy policy are really very big, and so hopefully this project can act as a starting point in tackling these problems.”

Over the last three years, the project has been carried out on two different levels. The first of these was focused on a more theoretical approach and essentially involved discussions with experts from research institutes, universities and the transport industry who already had some experience in implementing such measures, resulting in the publication of the “NICHES+ Guidelines for Implementers” – a set of documents outlining twelve highly recommended schemes, and instructions for any parties interested in applying them to their own cities.

The second process constituted a more hands-on approach that involved working together with six cities from around Europe and putting on to paper a viable implementation scenario for each particular region. These are well documented and provide excellent case studies for anyone else wishing to use these niches measures.

“Many of the measures that we have worked on are not overtly technological; they can be quite straightforward ideas,” explains Cré. “For instance, there is a region in northern France called Artois-Gohelle in which we worked on implementing travel training for children, the elderly and people with mobility needs, making sure that people within these groups were properly educated on how to utilise public transport. We brought in an expert from Salzburg (Austria) who taught people to carry out this travel training, and it was so successful that it has now become mandatory for all public transport operators in the region to carry this measure out.”It is the sheer simplicity of ideas like this that make them so successful, and with the implementation scenarios freely available on the Internet, it would be easy for any city or region to emulate them successfully. The implementation scenario documents contain information on how to fund such measures and also how to ensure their longevity and quality, so it is now down to local planners to put them into practice.

“We are very happy with what we have managed to achieve in 3 years for what is a relatively small-scale project,” says Cré. “The combination of theory and practice is a fairly original approach, and we feel that by working in such a direct manner with cities we have managed to incite discussions that may never have happened otherwise.

“Exercises such as creating stakeholder maps, in which cities were helped to analyse who they needed to involve locally to implement the NICHES+ measures really helped to motivate them into taking an interest in developing urban transport.

“Also, with so many public funds under pressure, it is really important that implementation and development processes are carried out in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.”

The NICHES+ project has now officially come to a close, but that is by no means the end of its lifespan in practical terms. There is now a wealth of resources available for everyone to use, from the 12 guidelines for implementers – readily digestible booklets with all the information needed to put in place the niches concepts – to a study tour guide for transport professionals, which contains information on more than 50 cities and highlights of things to see and people to meet so that you can get an idea of what Europe has to offer in terms of implemented transport innovation.

On the more theoretical side, the methodology that was put into use throughout the project has also been put to paper. This explains how they went about starting discussions on transferability, which essentially means whether a particular idea that has been implemented successfully in one place can be taken and put into place in another specific situation.

Assessing this in a properly structured manner is absolutely crucial; a lot of time and money can be saved if you are absolutely certain that the measures you decide to pursue are suitable for your needs. Cré gives an example:

“One discussion we had was with the town of Daventry on the subject of personal rapid transit – a means of transport involving small driverless vehicles that can take you to a number of predetermined destinations. This sort of set-up has already been implemented in Heathrow airport, and some places in Europe had been looking into how this technology could be transferred to a municipality or city. We used the transferability assessment methodology to see whether this was possible.”

The overarching achievement of the project is that they have created tools and have reported on interesting experiences and good practice that can facilitate discussion and action on a subject which can be technically difficult, and so hopefully, with their guidelines, more cities will be encouraged to pursue the innovation in transport that is needed by so many.

Published: Monday, 16th January 2012