On 15 December (10:00-13:00 CET) the European Commission organised a workshop (videoconference) on the recently started impact assessment for the revision of the Intelligent Transport Systems Directive. The workshop was well attended with over 220 participants representing a large variety of public and private stakeholders from across the EU and beyond.
At the beginning of the workshop, the study supporting the revision of the Impact Assessment of the ITS Directive was introduced, and the objectives of the workshop were outlined. At different points throughout the workshop, specific aspects of the study were presented, including the approach to the study, analysis of the feedback received to the Inception Impact Assessment, the draft problem definition, the scope of ITS services addressed by the study as well as the potential linkages with other policies that need to be considered.
In response to the study approach, stakeholders raised questions related to the proposed approach to assessing the market uptake of specific ITS services; the approach for assessing the fragmentation of ITS deployment; which stakeholders will be involved in the study and subsequent workshops; and the approach to forming bundles of ITS services for the purposes of the impact assessment as well as how the methodology intends to account for the impacts of these ITS service bundles. Another point raised was the consideration that addressing both the market and regulatory side is important when examining the revision of the Directive.
Considering the lack of deployment of ITS services, participants to the workshop talked over potential underlying factors such as the cost of vehicle hardware and software, the lack of business cases, and the lack of a common message exchange structure. With regards to interoperability, the interaction with standardisation bodies was also considered. Given the wide scope of the Directive, it was considered that specific actions should be considered to boost deployment for each of the different ITS domains.
On the topic of availability and sharing of data, the willingness and trust issues of data were highlighted including issues surrounding GDPR and whether a separate legal basis would need to be defined for safety-critical services. The support provided to Member States to facilitate mandated data sharing was explored, as well as currently used KPIs for ITS deployment.
Other general remarks included ensuring that strong business cases can be made for the private sector to deploy services to consumers quickly; and optimising the use of current infrastructure.
In the discussion considering the suggested service bundles, the overlap of C-ITS with other ITS services was explored. The coherence of the presented bundles in matters of categorisation of services was also discussed. In response to this, the study team pointed that the service bundles created would serve only for the purposes of facilitating the Impact Assessment methodology rather than providing a general categorisation of services.
A significant topic raised by many participants was the interaction of the Directive with other legislation. Stakeholders underlined the importance of coherence between legislative frameworks to ensure a stable framework in which operators can perform, as well as understanding how the effectiveness of the Directive may have changed since 2010 as a result of the introduction of other legislation. A number of policies, regulation and announced initiatives where brought up as relevant to be considered in the study including the Smart and Sustainable Mobility Strategy; multimodal travel information and real-time data legislation; cooperative, connected and automated mobility; General Safety Regulation; radio spectrum regulation; as well as other modal regulations (Shift2Rail, Rail Interoperability Directive, CRS Code of Conduct and the Air Services regulation).
Finally, a discussion took place regarding the need to update the priority areas of the Directive to also reflect a broader update of policy objectives and include areas such as transport network management.
Details
- Publication date
- 5 January 2021
- Author
- Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport