Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PORTIS (PORT-Cities: Integrating Sustainability)

Teaser

Port cities are recognised by the European Union as a priority action area. The need for enhanced communication, and integrated management systems and practices between port and city authorities are considered as being of increasing importance. Port cities face intriguing...

Summary

Port cities are recognised by the European Union as a priority action area. The need for enhanced communication, and integrated management systems and practices between port and city authorities are considered as being of increasing importance. Port cities face intriguing transport challenges and opportunities, beyond those of urban contexts that do not contain port facilities, due to the complex interaction between the port, the city, and the shared hinterland. This results in a wide and varied scope for planning and implementing integrated urban mobility solutions. Furthermore, port cities play a significant role in terms of the broader transport interactions beyond the urban context; with their presence as multi-modal hubs for the movement of passengers and goods able to influence growth at regional, national and international levels.
CIVITAS PORTIS is an Innovation Action (IA) financed by INEA under the H2020 Framework Programme. Its key objective is to try out and assess the efficacy of innovative sustainable mobility measures that address the problems of port cities across Europe. These solutions are demonstrated in five major port cities located on the four seas of Europe: Aberdeen, Antwerp (North Sea), Trieste (Mediterranean Sea), Constanta (Black Sea) and Klaipeda (Baltic Sea). The project also involves an international follower port city on the East China Sea (Ningbo).
PORTIS has established living laboratories in each of these cities to test 49 innovative mobility solutions ranging from newly-emerging technologies to policy-based and soft measures. The living laboratories focus on four areas: governance, people, transport systems, and goods. Most of the measures employ common approaches that are reinforced by four specific objectives: to generate and build innovation through collaboration across cities; to gather quantitative and qualitative evidence of the effectiveness of these measures; to transfer these innovations to port cities and marketplaces across Europe and beyond; and to ensure that the project’s results are accessible and expand the European knowledge base on the effectiveness and impacts of innovative mobility solutions.

Work performed

The project officially started on 1 September 2016. All five cities have set up their living laboratories and progressed with their local measures. The governance initiatives led to the approval of the SUMPs in Aberdeen and Klaipeda, and to the upgrade of the SUMP to a regional level in Antwerp. Constanta and Klaipeda established a structured dialogue with citizens and stakeholders, never before seen in Romania and Lithuania, while Trieste has set up a project office to redevelop the Old Port area together with citizens and other stakeholders. A cooperation protocol was signed between the city and the port in Constanta for less car dependent commuting to and from the port (WP1). In addition, the five cities have taken steps to improve public transport and encourage cycling, thereby providing mobility apps and guides to facilitate getting around the city/port area. New ways of commuting to the Port have been implemented in Antwerp, Constanta and Trieste, supported by awareness-raising campaigns, such as “Smart ways to Antwerp” and the “Giving back the sidewalks to pedestrians” campaign in Constanta (WP2). The cities have also studied traffic flows, parking, signage and clean energy, to find ways to reduce pollution and make transport more efficient. A new system for the prioritisation of public transport has been developed in Klaipeda and an access control system is now in use in Trieste based on camera and sensor technology (WP3). Given the importance of freight transport in port cities, improvement of interconnectivity and traffic flows in order to reduce environmental impacts has been pursued. Freight routing backed by smart technology and cooperation with industry has been developed in Aberdeen, while real-time tracking of vehicles and cargoes to and inside the port is being developed in Trieste. A market place for logistic solutions is active in Antwerp, with 17 operational projects (WP4).
The project has also defined the CIVITAS PORTIS Innovation Process, created the electronic innovation brochure, and established the Thematic Innovation Platform and related working groups (WP5). Moreover, evaluation activities have been carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the PORTIS measures in terms of impacts and process (WP6). Actions to understand the potential market for CIVITAS PORTIS innovations have been finalised and the transferability potential of local measures has been assessed. A study visit was organised in Antwerp in May 2019, while cooperation with China was enhanced with a EU delegation visiting Ningbo in March 2019 (WP7). Regarding the project’s visibility, the cities have set up their national websites and have used their selected ambassadors to increase citizen engagement and promote sustainable mobility. PORTIS days have been held in all cities over the years (WP8). The Policy Group met three times in Antwerp (2016), Trieste (2017) and Constanta (2018), and discussed structured policy briefs on urban mobility topics of common interest, such as ‘Understanding mobility mind-sets for changing behaviour’, ‘How to cope with innovation’; and ‘Mobility as a Service (Maas)’ (WP9).

Final results

Project evaluation activities are conducted in parallel to the implementation of city measures in order to assess how well the objectives are being met and to identify any drivers or barriers that may impact the successful implementation. At this stage, all measures undertaken by the cities are now in the implementation stage and baseline data are available. Progress beyond the state of the art has been made in each of the cities and the first results are already visible. In the city of Antwerp, for instance, awareness raising and the creation of the brand ‘Smart Ways to Antwerp’ have contributed to behavioural change among citizens, visitors and commuters. In the city, car use has declined from 51% to 41% (2010 vs 2018), while the cycling share has gone from 21% to 33%, with Velo rides increasing from 3,373,101 in 2016 to 6,458,434 in 2018. The SUMPs of Aberdeen and Klaipeda have been approved through participatory processes involving stakeholders and citizens, while in Trieste a report on the city’s mobility, based on 12,000 interviews with citizens, stakeholders and freight managers was concluded. In Constanta, a key aspect of the implementation process is the harmonisation of the methodologies for evaluating future joint projects between the Municipality and the Port.
In addition to the measure-by-measure evaluation, PORTIS has set ambitious targets for a number of socio-economic expected headline impacts relating, for example, to the number of city-port commuters by car, the modal share of public transport, cycling, and walking, as well as the employment and unemployment rates in the city and the number of new businesses and jobs created due to dock redevelopment. While PORTIS measures have the potential to contribute to changes in indicator values for all of these, in many cases the assessment will be part of a more holistic understanding of the influences on a city-wide basis using a new Strategic Level Assessment Tool that has been developed by the project, based on clustering of measures and an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) analysis.

Website & more info

More info: http://civitas.eu/portis.