CIVITAS honours urban transport trailblazers at annual awards ceremony
The cities of Bologna and Genova in Italy and Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain were honoured at the 2010 CIVITAS Awards ceremony on 28 September for their pioneering work to promote clean and better urban transport. The cities were presented with their awards at the annual CIVITAS Forum conference, in Malmö Sweden, which began on 27 September. The CIVITAS Awards recognise exemplary efforts by a European city to implement sustainable and energy efficient transport policies.
The winners came top in one of three categories: technical innovation, public participation and CIVITAS City of the Year. Bologna won the award for Technical Innovation as scientists working for the city and the University of Bologna have designed an intelligent transport system (ITS) that integrates traffic monitoring and rule enforcement. Awards jury member Christian Resebo, development secretary and analyst for the City of Malmö, said: “Bologna describes an integrated use of ITS and a way to use technology to facilitate modal shift while providing a service to travellers.” Donostia-San Sebastián (Spain) was the runner-up in this category, for its innovative bike delivery system, which uses power-assisted bicycles for goods transport within the city.Vitoria-Gasteiz came top in the Public Participation category, which rewards cities for consulting transport users and groups during the planning, implementation or evaluation of initiatives. The Basque city's authorities made an extraordinary effort to involve citizens and other stakeholders in the development of a Sustainable Mobility and Public Space Plan, mobilising dozens of volunteers to brief the population about the changes. This resulted in a strong sense of ownership for the Plan among the local population, which helped overcome challenges such as conflicts of interest and adjustment to the changes. Krakow (Poland) was the runner-up in this category. Its well-developed and thorough consultation process with experts and citizens has resulted in improved satisfaction levels with public transport, up from 75% in 2006 to 88% in 2009.Genova won the award for the CIVITAS City of the Year, which recognises the CIVITAS network member which has been most active, responsible and progressive in developing sustainable mobility measures. Among a number of bold measures introduced, the city authorities in Genova bought over 100 clean vehicles for public transport, introduced a car-sharing scheme and restricted vehicle access to the historic centre. Brescia (also Italy) was the runner-up in this category. By introducing a broad series of measures - car-sharing, bike-sharing, cleaner public transport vehicles, integrated fares system and other actions - the city authorities have achieved impressive results in modifying citizens' transport behaviour.Twenty-four cities entered the competition this year, each a member of the CIVITAS Forum Network, making it the most hotly contested CIVITAS Awards series to date. Several of the entrants - Beja (Portugal), Bolzano, Parma (both Italy), Ponferrada (Spain) and Valetta (Malta) - merit particular recognition as they receive no EU funding through CIVITAS for their efforts to improve urban mobility.
Author: CIVITAS Secretariat
