Expression of Interest submitted for MegaBITS project
Picture: Interreg NSR programme
Today (7th of March 2022) several BITS partners together have submitted an Expression of Interest (EoI) for the first call of the new Interreg North Sea Region Programme. The EoI addresses Priority 2 ‘A green transition in the North Sea Region’, and more specifically the Specific Objective 2.5: Promoting sustainable multimodal urban mobility. The new proposal aims at the continuation of BITS after 2022. The new project will be called MegaBITS: Mobilizing Europe’s Green Ambition through Bicycles and Intelligent Transport Systems. The new name reflects the fact that the project will move from many small pilot implementations to a small number of larger integrated ITS projects for cyclists, thus increasing the impact towards the greening of transport in cities and regions in the North Sea Region.
Just as in the current BITS project, the Province of Overijssel will be the lead partner in the new project proposal, and together with the cities of Zwolle and Enschede they will focus on creating a smart cycling corridor along the cycle highway F35. The city of Copenhagen will focus its implementation on smart bicycle traffic management, whereas the city of Hamburg will enrich static counting data with floating bike data and integrate cycling data with real time public transport data to offer better services to cyclists. The Province of Antwerp will concentrate on cycling data, both through citizen science and by continuing its work on the CycleDataHub. New in MegaBITS are two French partners, i.e. Communauté Urbaine Le Havre Seine Métropole (CU LHSM) and Rennes Métropole. CU LHSM sees data as a tool for cycling policy and thus wants to collect data on cycle use, routes, speeds, parkings, etc. Rennes Métropole will apply ITS to improve the rural-urban connection from the surrounding areas to Rennes, including a link to the Public Transport system. Two other parties involved are Cycling Industries Europe, that will be responsible for the communication and the link to the ITS and cycling industry, and Chalmers University of Technology that will be responsible for the evaluation, recommendations and replication of the ITS implementations.
If the Expression of Interest is accepted, the consortium will write a Full Proposal in autumn 2022 and hopes to kick-off the new project early 2023.