The first Urban Nodes Forum took place on the 3rd and 4th of April 2019 in Budapest, and it was organised by the Vital Nodes project consortium in close cooperation with the BKK (Centre for Budapest Transport).
The objectives of the event were the exchange of knowledge and the collection of good practices related to sustainable freight transport in urban nodes and along TEN-T corridors and the validation of intermediate recommendations on funding and research needs for CEF and TEN-T Guidelines to the European Commission, originating from the good practices collected so far from urban nodes.
As the first event of its kind, the Urban Nodes Forum gathered a diversified audience of about 90 participants, composed by a wide range of transport and urban mobility professionals. Among them: TEN-T urban nodes representatives, urban planners, infrastructure coordinators and operators, freight and logistics operators, and funding specialists in mobility, infrastructure, passenger transport and freight logistics.
The 2-day work program was structured around a series of nine workshops that revolved around subtopics of the central theme of how to plan for sustainable freight transport in the TEN-T urban nodes and on the corridors. Speakers shared insightful presentations that generated fruitful discussions on a number of topics, among which some were identified as outstanding: railway development and modernization; access by the comprehensive network and peripheral areas to the core network; multimodality; integrated spatial infrastructure planning; more efficient use of existing infrastructure; integration of FUA’s into the TEN-T; ITS digitalisation and organisation of data; tackling the last mile, cooperation, good governance and role of institutions, institutional capacity-building, and methodological questions, such as the definition of standards.
The event was completed by two enriching site visits organised by the Centre for Budapest Transport (BKK). The participants had the opportunity to visit two innovative and state-of-the-art transport control centres: the M4 control centre, the control centre of the newest, fully automated metro line in Budapest; and the FUTÁR, the operative management centre of a passenger information system that updates and directs travelers in the street and on-board vehicles via a mobile application and a website.
Please click here to access all the presentations and pictures of the event.