UPPER

UPPER will put the Public Transport at the centre of the mobility ecosystem by implementing a combination of 84 push and pull measures, acting on the 5 innovation axes that condition users’ choices: mindset and culture, urban mobility planning, mobility services ecosystem, road network management and democratic governance. These measures will act in 4 different timescales (from shorter to longer-term): communication, operations, infrastructure and urban fabric. UPPER measures will be demonstrated in 10 pilot sites across Europe, with the overall target of increasing the use of public transport by >30% and the user satisfaction by >25%, leaving nobody behind in the process. This integrated and holistic approach will ease the cooperation among authorities and operators, offer a physical and digital environment to test the measures, update the existing SUMPs, optimise the PT offer in line with user needs and patterns, involve the users in the overall mobility decision chain, trigger the behavioural change in favour of Public Transport and achieve an attractive, efficient, reliable, safe, inclusive and affordable Public Transport system in line with the concept of Mobility as a Right (MaaR).

The UPPER Consortium, coordinated by the International Association of Public Transport (UITP), brings together 41 partners from 10 countries, with inter-disciplinary knowledge and multi-domain expertise and knowledge, covering the full value chain of the public transport and sustainable urban mobility domain. The UPPER partners in a city are the manager, operator or the authority responsible for all the required urban and public transport infrastructure, which guarantees access to these assets. From the technological side, large industrial and consultancy companies and 10 SMEs bring into the consortium their expertise in the field and their technology to design and develop the project outcomes. UPPER also gathers 5 leading academic and research organisations, being at the forefront of innovation and well experienced in mutually beneficial collaborations with industry. UPPER is a cities and public transport-driven project that include the local administrations and/or the public transport authorities and operators from the 10 cities participating in the project. In addition, UPPER is composed of the most representative networks of cities, operators and authorities for public transport and urban mobility in Europe, which provide the consortium with their knowledge and leadership, also ensuring the maximization of project medium-term impact.

The 10 UPPER sites where measures will be implemented are:

Valencia
Rome
Versailles Grand Parc
Oslo
Mannheim
Thessaloniki
Leuven
Lisbon
Hannover Region
Budapest

The UPPER measures will be supported by a UPPER Measures Implementation Support Toolkit composed of seven Tools that will be co-designed by the project partners, taking advantage of their wealth of experience in various areas related to urban mobility:

U-TWIN: this platform will advance the state of the art offering the digital twin of the Public Transport and mobility assets of the city, becoming a building block for the city/urban digital twins and providing an architecture with enough flexibility to be integrated into current systems and prepared by design to be interoperable and scalable for potential extensions.
U-SIM: will be a simulation tool to evaluate the expected service conditions from the users’ point of view to allow cities to make simulation-based on existing models. U-SIM build on an available software suite which will be extended to evaluate the impact of the implementation of mobility measures and for enabling live monitoring of Public Transport service
U-NEED: support and decision-making tool for Public Transport Operators, relying on neural networks that will be trained through supervised learning techniques to allow PTO a quick response and activate corrective in a guided manner, such as sending information to other actors or action on elements of the fleet management system. The forecast of future information considers both historical information, real-time information and forecasted information from other external sources such as weather. This makes it possible to have a mobility forecast that covers from the current state to the long-term forecast state.
U-GOV: a digital collaborative platform aiming at being a meeting point among the different actors of social innovation where to propose, discuss, enrich and co-create new solutions. It will support the generations of pull initiatives, with the final goal to facilitate citizen participation, being a channel to address the expectations and aspirations of different groups of citizens and organisations and taking part in the decision making of sustainable urban mobility.
U-KNOW: this portal will become the “UPPER knowledge powerhouse for Public Transport”, a Mission-oriented space for knowledge exchange interconnected with existing, related platforms. U-KNOW will be based on the CIVITAS SATELLITE evaluation framework, going beyond it in sustainability and PT efficiency, levels of innovative solutions adoption and mobility ecosystem innovation readiness, among others.
U-TRANSFER: will offer a platform to cities and PTOs for knowledge exchange and discussion on the enablers and barriers that govern the implementation and replication of successful solutions. It will offer an interactive online discussion board and repository of case studies, best practices and other useful resources. U-TRANSFER will provide tailored workshops based on a detailed mapping of needs and city visits based on a matchmaking process that can facilitate relationships based on similar challenges, cultural and governance background. U-TRANSFER will provide transferability guidelines that will facilitate the transferability of UPPER solutions to a broader range of cities.
U-SUMP: will be tailor-made monitoring and decision support tool for achieving climate-neutrality, with PT at its core in European cities and regions. It will be based on the analysis of current SUMPs, city baselines, assessment of specific climate-neutrality targets, going beyond the monitoring of measures, allowing also comparing and assessing to what extent UPPER cities are on track to achieve PT and climate-neutrality targets.