This year’s CIVITAS Forum Conference takes place between 19 and 21 September in the Swedish town of Umeå. Over a period of three days, hundreds of policymakers, city representatives, academics, and users from all over the world gathered together to discuss pressing issues about mobility. Some of the areas of focus include pioneering, sustainable solutions for cleaner and better transport in Europe. The theme this year is ‘Better Mobility for U and Me’ with an emphasis on multi-modal traffic systems.

During this event, four cities were rewarded for their special efforts in the field of forward-looking transport solutions. One of the winners this year was the TMaaS project for the City of Ghent together with Reggio Emilia (Italy), Szeged (Hungary) and Banja Luka (Bosnia and Hercegovina). It received an award in recognition of the bold and innovative approach that positions the city of Ghent as a pioneer in a number of important transport themes. The ‘Bold Measure’ Award was presented on Thursday night to the Sophie Gillaerts, project coordinator of TMaaS and Peter Meirsschaut, City of Ghent.

The aim of the TMaaS platform is to provide a forward-looking solution for urban traffic and the problems arising from this. The traffic platform provides governments and citizens with a wealth of traffic information in real time aimed at optimising urban mobility. It combines mobility information from data and transport companies and other players and communicates them automatically to end users. The cloud-based TMaaS solution is futuristic, efficient and inexpensive. Moreover, it can be used in any urban context. Urban Innovative Actions, an initiative by the European Union is providing financial support for the development of this concept for a period of three years.

TMaaS is a joint venture involving a number of project partners from different fields including the City of Ghent itself, Ghent University and KU Leuven, TomTom, the global player in the field of navigation and mapping, the Ghent software company Waylay – the creator of cloud-based automation platforms and Be-Mobile, the market leader in smart mobility, also from Ghent. The European Passengers’ Federation EPF (with headquarters in Ghent) is also involved and the communications are handled by the communications agency De Staatse Ruiter. An advisory board with international experts will evaluate the evolution of the project every six months until the end of January 2021.

This prestigious prize is now well and truly under the belt of the TMaaS team and is a major motivating factor for continuing on this successful course.

You can find more information on www.tmaas.eu or follow the team on twitter @tmaas_eu.

Contact details:

Suzanne Hendrikse, communications manager TMaaS
suzanne@tmaas.eu
+32 (0) 468 512 755