Boosting Advanced Public Transport Systems (BAPTS)

A large majority of European citizens live in an urban environment, with over 60 per cent living in urban areas of over 10,000 inhabitants. They live in the same space and for their mobility share the same infrastructure.
 
Urban mobility accounts for 40 per cent of all CO2 emissions of road transport and up to 70 per cent of other pollutants from transport. It is widely agreed that according to this situation public transport systems in urban areas must be developed further in order to be truly considered an alternative to individual (car-based) mobility.

The mission of BAPTS is to implement an integrated package of high-quality public transport systems and services as model solutions for clean, efficient, accessible and sustainable mobility in north-west Europe (NWE). The project runs from January 2008 until December 2011, with a budget of about €15.3mn. BAPTS brings together nine partners from six European countries, which translate different regional approaches into tangible actions and high-quality outputs.

The BAPTS partners are Stadt Bielefeld as lead partner and Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV) from Germany, Darlington Borough Council and Southend-on-Sea (both UK), Dublin Transport Authority (Ireland), Gemeente Eindhoven (Netherlands), Ville de Liége (Belgium), Lille Métropole Communauté and Nantes Métropele Communauté (both France).

The project delivers concrete solutions for sustainable urban transport systems that can be widely adopted in north-west Europe and beyond. During implementation particular emphasis is put on five areas of intervention:

• Multimodality and interoperability
• Integrated mobility planning
• Marketing and mobility awareness
• Intelligent transport systems
• Transregional learning and knowledge exchange.

Concrete examples for results of the BAPTS project are:
• Sustainable travel plans and smartcard-operated bicycle parking/cycle hire (Darlington)
• Development and implementation of new public transport-oriented marketing strategies, focussing on the specific needs of different target groups and lifecycles (Bielefeld, Darlington, Southend, RMV)
• Development and implementation of new contactless and smartcard-based ticketing schemes (Lille, RMV)
• Design of intelligent ticketing and traffic management schemes (Dublin, Lille, Bielefeld)
• Development and implementation of integrated multimodal transport corridors (Eindhoven, Southend)
• Test and comparison of on-board and off-board infotainment systems (RMV, Lille)
• Implementation of new ICT-based flexible bus corridors (Nantes, Dublin)
• Development of integrated regional strategies and analysis of the wider socio-economic benefits for the re-introduction of the tram (Liege).