On November 15th the ITS Forum was held in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The central theme of the conference was: Traffic Management in a changing Environment.
Various topics were discussed during the event, including the digitisation of traffic and transport, Mobility as a Service (MaaS), public-private partnerships, autonomous driving and (big) data.
The conference was opened by Dutch Minister for Infrastructure and Water Management, Cora van Nieuwenhuien. In addition there were keynote speeches from Matthew Baldwin (Deputy Director-Gneral of DG Move) and Herald Ruijters (Directof of DG Move). The event was attended by over 300 delegates from over 20 different countries.
Mobycon CEO, Johan Diepens, was there to close the congress. He made his entrance by cycling into the exhibition hall, showing off Dutch cycle culture for all the attendees. Once he’d gotten off his bike, his presentation looked at how ITS is applied in the Netherlands in relation to cycling. He drew parallels between lorry parking and bicycle parking, between floating car data and floating bicycle parking and between the connected car and the connected bicycle. Johan made it clear that advancements with autonomous vehicle technology should not be made at the expense of the bicycle.
Pictures: Gab Franken