European Commission Action Plan takes clear actions for ITS deployment in Europe

Creation date: 02 March 2009

On 16 December 2008, the European Commission published the European Commission Action Plan for the Deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems in Europe.

The ITS Action Plan underlines the role that Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) can play to deliver clean, efficient, safe and secure road transport and it aims to accelerate and coordinate the deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in road transport. This will also include interfaces with other transport modes and to create a consistent and comprehensive policy framework, to unlock the full potential of ITS in serving European and national policies.

In order to reach these objectives the European Commission has identified six priority areas for action. Road safety and security is one of them. Although safety and security-related systems have already proven their effectiveness when deployed, further development and coordinated efforts still need to be considered to foster their wide scale deployment and installation in new vehicles.

As clearly demonstrated in a number of recent studies, eCall is one of the most effective safety systems. eCall will improve the whole emergency rescue chain: it will provide accurate location of the accident, reduce the communication delay by immediately sending the necessary information to the closest PSAP, and by allowing the PSAP operator to immediately dispatch the emergency services to the correct location.

The Action Plan underlines the utmost importance of the implementation platform for the harmonised introduction of pan-European eCall, including awareness campaigns, upgrading Public Service Access Points’ infrastructures and a regulatory framework to ensure safe on-board human-machine interface, including the mobile devices taken into the vehicle.

The Commission proposes a streamlining and integration of the applications into a standardised open in-vehicle platform, aiming to increase the safety and functionality of the car equipment, reduce costs and enable an easy “plug and play” usability of the personal electronic equipment in the car.

In parallel, the functional specifications for the infrastructure-to-infrastructure, vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-vehicle communication will be defined. The relevant standardisation issues will also be addressed.

The Action Plan is accompanied by a Directive proposal providing a framework for the implementation of this ITS Action Plan. The Member States and the Commission will agree on common specifications aimed at ensuring EU-wide coordinated deployment of interoperable ITS. The Directive proposal is now being discussed at European Parliament and Council level.

The European Commission will report on the implementation progress of this Action Plan in 2012. This report will also review and, if necessary, extend the priority areas as well as the scope of the actions.

For the European Commission Press release on the ITS Action Plan and the Directive proposal please click here.