EPF is excited to announce the launch of the new EU-funded project UPPER (Unleashing the Potential of Public transport in EuRope) which aims at spearheading a public transport revolution, seeking to put public transport at the centre of the mobility ecosystem and strengthening its role as the flagship of sustainability and innovation of mobility in cities.

The project will implement a combination of measures looking to push people out of their private cars and to pull them closer to public transport in cities across Europe. These measures will aim to increase the share of public transport and will cover different market segments and different ‘innovation axes’: Mindset and culture; Urban Mobility Planning; Mobility Services Ecosystem; Road Network Management; Democratic Governance. The UPPER measures – 84 in total – will be tested in the UPPER Living Labs (Valencia, Rome, Ile de France, Oslo and Mannheim) and the UPPER Twinning Cities (Lisbon, Leuven, Hannover Region, Budapest, Thessaloniki), while the UPPER Toolkit will provide a set of 7 IT tools to support their implementation.

The goal of the project is very ambitious: to increase the use of public transport by over 30% and to increase user satisfaction by at least 25%, while leaving nobody behind in the process. UPPER will be strongly linked with the goals of the Cities Mission in order to accelerate the transition towards a zero emission mobility in cities which will become the cornerstone of climate neutrality by 2030. Importantly, the project will run on participative governance and involve end users, therefore ensuring that decisions are made in concert with and cater to the needs of different target groups.

The project which will be coordinated by UITP (International Association of Public Transport) was launched across a two-day kick-off that took place in Brussels between 24-25 January, 2023. UPPER will run over the course of four years and sees the participation of forty-one partners across the public transport sector in Europe.

The UPPER website is still under construction and will be launched soon, so stay tuned!