Fifteen European cities from twelve countries join the seventh edition of the Rapid Applications for Transport (RAPTOR) programme by EIT Urban Mobility, an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union. RAPTOR is a challenge-based programme that swiftly creates and tests solutions to answer niche urban mobility challenges identified by the cities. The Call sees startups and SMEs propose promising innovative and impactful solutions to answer these challenges. Winners are awarded funding (60,000 euros) to develop and pilot their solution across the six-month project period in the city.
Each of the 15 cities identified a unique challenge they face, ranging from improving public transport planning via anonymised passenger data and creating digital inventory of traffic signs and road markings, to helping citizens choose safe and accessible routes in subarctic climate conditions. The participating cities for the 2026 edition are: Berlin and Wiesbaden (Germany), Salzburg (Austria), Trento (Italy), Nitra (Slovakia), Bălți (Moldova), Lviv (Ukraine), Helsinki (Finland), Luleå (Sweden), Arteixo and Bilbao (Spain), Brussels (Belgium), and Edinburgh and London (United Kingdom).
Adriana Diaz, Director of Innovation, EIT Urban Mobility: “The RAPTOR programme reflects our commitment to partnering cities with startups and SMEs to rapidly test solutions that address real urban mobility challenges. By offering funding, mentoring and direct city‑level testing, we enable high‑impact ideas to be turned into real improvements in urban living.”
EIT Urban Mobility will launch the open Call in mid-January 2026, for European startups and SMEs to propose solutions that address the city challenges. The niche mobility challenges for each of these cities will be explained and detailed during the Call information days taking place on 21, 22 and 23 January 2026, to support SMEs and startups in preparing to respond to the call.
Arteixo (Spain) – How can Arteixo identify and prioritise optimal charging locations for public and municipal fleets?
Arteixo’s mobility is dominated by cars and heavy transport, with 65,000 daily trips to A Coruña and major logistics activity in Sabón and Morás. Although bus use and the shared bike system are growing, fleets remain almost fully fossil-fuel based. Charging points are few and uncoordinated, limiting electrification. The city now seeks data-driven analysis to map needs, prioritise sites, and plan an integrated smart charging network for public and municipal fleets.
Bălți (Moldova) – How can Bălți improve public transport operations and provide accurate real-time passenger information, encouraging more residents to shift from cars to buses?
Bălți’s public transport is facing declining reliability and ridership, with outdated routes and aging buses and trolleybuses. Despite new GPS-equipped trolleybuses, data is not integrated into a unified system, leaving passengers without accurate arrival info. Existing info panels and the “Umnîi Transport” app are underused due to limited real-time data. The city seeks solutions to turn operational data into reliable passenger information and support data-driven route and schedule optimisation.
Berlin (Germany) – How can Berlin quickly identify priority school routes to implement targeted road safety measures for children?
Berlin seeks a standardised, data-driven method to identify and assess heavily used school routes to support evidence-based decisions and faster implementation of safety measures for children. Current approaches focus on school surroundings rather than on routes leading to them and rely on labour-intensive inspections. Berlin aims to establish a structured, standardised and more efficient procedure. The solution should integrate existing datasets, digital route mappings, and student-reported issues into a scalable model.
Bilbao (Spain) – How can Bilbao improve the mobility of patients, especially older adults and people with reduced mobility, when accessing health centres?
Bilbao’s health centres face high parking demand, with spaces often taken by non-patients, causing access problems for elderly and mobility-impaired users, appointment delays, extra traffic, and conflicts. Current systems don’t prioritise healthcare-related parking. The city seeks a technological solution for reservations and control points that helps manage access support enforcement, and that provides data for decision making with the aim of ensuring patient access near health centres.
Brussels (Belgium) – How can Brussels enrich EV-charging data to include accessibility and vehicle-size information for more inclusive electric mobility?
Brussels is expanding on- and off-street EV charging, but some key users still face barriers. Large delivery vans often cannot access standard bays, while people with reduced mobility face obstacles such as narrow spaces around the EV, the lack of drop kerb, and consideration of space required for wheelchair users around the charge point. Existing datasets lack standardised information on physical accessibility, preventing apps from routing users to suitable chargers and limiting the city’s ability to identify gaps. This data gap hinders efficiency, inclusiveness, and the success of the region’s electrification strategy.
Edinburgh (United Kingdom) – How can Edinburgh use existing vehicle data effectively to implement data-driven and differentiated parking charges based on vehicle attributes?
Edinburgh’s narrow streets are stressed by large, heavy vehicles, worsening wear and reducing parking space. Current parking charges don’t reflect vehicle type or emissions, limiting the city’s ability to incentivise smaller, low-emission vehicles. To meet its 2030 net-zero goal and cut car trips by 30%, the city aims to use driver and vehicle licencing agency data to enable evidence-based, fair parking fees. Integrating this data with technology could support sustainable parking pricing, protect historic streets, and optimise limited urban space.
Guimarães (Portugal) – How can Guimarães optimise the scheduling, routing, and tracking of deliveries of fresh goods from the municipal market using an e-vehicle micro-logistics service?
Urban logistics in Guimarães, especially around the municipal market, face congestion and emissions due to uncoordinated deliveries by private vehicles. Around 180 vendors supply local restaurants with fresh produce, but the lack of a consolidated system reduces efficiency and sustainability. Morning peaks worsen traffic as suppliers coincide with commuters. The city plans to use a municipal electric vehicle for consolidated and coordinated deliveries, supporting local supply chains, reducing emissions, and advancing a climate-neutral neighbourhood.
Helsinki (Finland) – How can Helsinki use professional fleet vehicles as a data collection platform?
Helsinki’s current data collection relies on separate, stand-alone missions, static sensors, and manual counts, resulting in high costs, inefficiency, and limited data quality. These methods are slow, inflexible, and hard to scale. The city aims to use existing professional fleets such as public transport, maintenance, and logistics vehicles, as mobile sensing platforms, enabling simultaneous multi-type data collection without adding traffic. This approach would provide a dynamic, accurate view of street conditions and enhance urban management.
London (United Kingdom) – How can London dynamically manage kerbside space to improve accessibility and reduce unnecessary traffic?
Abbeville Road in Clapham is a busy high street dominated by cars and parking, limiting space for pedestrians, cyclists, and people with reduced mobility. Over 60% of street space is used by vehicles at peak times, while the area records an average of 600 road casualties per year. Lambeth aims to reallocate 25% of kerbside space to sustainable uses by 2030, supporting its strategies to cut emissions and improve safety for all street users.
Luleå (Sweden) – How can Luleå promote and increase soft mobility by using winter road-condition data to help citizens choose safe and accessible routes in a subarctic climate?
Luleå’s subarctic winters create mobility challenges for pedestrians and cyclists due to heavy snowfall and slippery surfaces from freezing and thawing. While the municipality and state transport authority carry out winter maintenance, citizens often lack reliable, up-to-date information on safe routes, limiting soft-mobility travel. Current data is scattered and hard to access. Providing frequent, accessible road-condition information is essential to support winter soft mobility, reduce emissions, and improve maintenance efficiency.
Lviv (Ukraine) – How can Lviv develop an accurate digital inventory of traffic signs and road markings to improve road safety and traffic management?
Lviv’s traffic signs and markings are recorded separately by multiple contractors, with only paper or scanned records, creating no unified digital database. This hinders safety audits, maintenance, and data-driven traffic management, while missing or damaged signs increase risks and congestion. The city plans a central digital inventory detailing type, location, and condition of all signs, improving safety, traffic flow, maintenance efficiency, incident response, and supporting smart city and autonomous vehicle initiatives.
Nitra (Slovakia) – How can Nitra obtain accurate, anonymised boarding and alighting data across its bus network to improve public transport planning?
Nitra has invested in comfortable low-floor buses and introduced a cashless ticketing system, eliminating manual ticket validation that once provided basic passenger counts. Today only 15 out of 80 buses are equipped with automatic passenger counters, leaving city planners without a complete and reliable picture of where passengers board and alight. Although buses have CCTV systems capable of tracking passenger movements, more comprehensive aggregated boarding and alighting data would enable better service planning.
Salzburg (Austria) – How can Salzburg enhance its internal shared mobility system to increase use across departments and support sustainable staff mobility?
Salzburg’s internal shared mobility system for municipal employees, including 150 bikes (half electric) and 1–2 shared e-cars, is decentralised and managed via Outlook, causing inefficient booking, poor accountability, and inconsistent maintenance. Keys, charging, and usage data lack central oversight, limiting performance tracking, and preventive care. The city seeks solutions to streamline booking, feedback, and maintenance, improving efficiency, usage, and sustainability without replacing the existing system.
Trento (Italy) – How can Trento help citizens plan better cycling trips and encourage greater use of the existing cycling infrastructure?
Trento has invested in cycling infrastructure, including paths, covered parking, and racks, but citizens struggle to access clear, user-friendly information. The city’s map of existing cycle paths is available in GIS format only, and other existing digital tools for bike paths, parking, and bike-sharing are disconnected and not integrated with major navigation apps. This fragmentation limits awareness and use of cycling infrastructure. The city aims to improve accessibility and integrate these tools, creating a seamless digital experience to encourage everyday cycling.
Wiesbaden (Germany) – How can Wiesbaden better monitor and manage its urban loading zones to improve delivery efficiency and reduce congestion?
Wiesbaden has built over 60 strategically located loading zones to reduce congestion and emissions, improving traffic flow and delivery efficiency. However, the city lacks systematic data on usage, vehicle types, peak periods, and zone effectiveness, limiting optimisation. The main aims of this project would be to monitor and analyse existing loading zones’ performance and compliance, with data-driven insights supporting potential future planning of additional zones as a secondary objective.
Register to join the RAPTOR 2026 Call information webinars to hear more about the Call and city challenges here. To learn more about RAPTOR and previous projects, visit the RAPTOR website.
