(original article by CARNET)

Despite the efforts to promote sustainable transportation systems, cities still face challenges in distributing public street space to different uses. For example, double-parking caused by delivery vehicles is one of the main negative impacts of the outburst in last-mile deliveries. This impacts private vehicles and vital roads, generating conflicts with pedestrians, cyclists, public transport, and emergency vehicles. In addition, data on curbside (e.g., parking, loading zones) is unstructured and insufficient to take proper decisions. There is a need for innovative measures to help cities reduce congestion and trips, achieve sustainable mobility goals, improve delivery efficiency, and potentially increase revenues. Last year, a consortium of EIT Urban Mobility’s partners began the FlexCurb project to find new and innovative solutions. Co-funded by EIT Urban Mobility, the project aims to overcome all these challenges through a series of tools used by drivers and public administration.

Thanks to the success of 2022, the project recently kicked off its 2023 edition. Its main focus during 2023 will be to validate the solution in real-life environments further and adapt the existing technology to the particular case of the pilot city of Strasbourg, France. Also, the Connected Vehicles extension for the FlexCurb Planning platform will be designed and validated during the year. This will reveal historical patterns of curb use and inform actions to reduce occupancy rates, and illegal parking, redistribute curb spaces, and promote sustainable mobility and logistics.

In addition, the FlexCurb Driver App is being upgraded. New features will be added, and the main objective will be to help drivers inform about their operations by displaying the areas of the city with the most and least parking activity based on historical patterns at a given time. This feature will help to control the flow of vehicles, as many drivers will be able to evaluate whether it is convenient for them to drive their cars based on the parking activity mentioned.

These tests intend to keep enhancing the app and adapting it to the needs of users and councils. Looking back, during 2022 the project achieved significant results in developing innovative solutions for curbside management with the cities of Leuven, Strasbourg, Funchal, and Toulouse. One of them was creating the concept of Shared-Use Mixed Zones (SUM Zones), which integrates parking management, urban vehicle access regulations, and freight management with flexible curbside management.

Considering the needs of various stakeholders, including pedestrians, cyclists, public transportation, and freight services, the proposed curbside management solutions can potentially revolutionize urban mobility by promoting a balanced and inclusive transportation ecosystem. This approach will reduce the environmental impact of conveyance, minimize vehicle emissions, and support the shift towards greener modes of transportation.

The partners involved in the project are CTAG, Urban Radar, CARNET, Ghent University, the city of Funchal, Toulouse Métropole, Ville et Eurométropole de Strasbourg, city of Leuven, POLIS Network, and FIT Consulting.

If you want to know more about the FlexCurb project, you can visit the project website here: https://urbanradar.io/flex-curb/

Thanks to the collaboration between EIT Urban Mobility and the Moove Lab, Bout, a Finnish start-up specialising in nautical mobility, settles in Paris to tackle the French market.

Founded in 2018, Bout is a platform that connects people looking for boat trips and those who offer them through an app (Mobility-as-a-Service). The platform makes it possible to centralise the fragmented market of water taxis and large boats into a single service; simplifying the purchase process on the customer side and increasing the efficiency of sales and operations on the service provider side.

During 2023, Bout will offer its service to towns located along the Seine, a river which connects Troyes, Paris, Rouen and Le Havre. By using the Seine as a circulation channel, the objective is to improve the mobility of people based in the cities bordered by this river, centralising the local offer of river transportation.

By settling in Paris, Bout is targeting an important river market which is still little exploited while having high numbers of tourists and inhabitants to tap in. For Peik Lehtonen, co-founder of Bout: “Paris has an excellent balance between tourists, citizens, underused waterways and service providers. Many river towns have wonderful services, but they are hard to find. By using modern technologies and a central platform, our goal is to help service providers find customers and sell their services through one single app.”

The expansion of Bout to France takes place within the framework of the collaboration between EIT Urban Mobility and the Moove Lab (reference accelerator for mobility start-ups located at Station F in Paris).
For Peter Vest, Senior Investment and Portfolio Manager EIT Urban Mobility: “The Nordic countries are famous for their beautiful archipelagos. With its origin in Helsinki, Bout is a good example of what this type of environment can bring in terms of river innovation. Within EIT Urban Mobility, we see great potential for mobility by water, which makes it possible to transport people and goods in busy urban environments, such as rivers, lakes and ports.”

Bout is also preparing the ground for nautical mobility in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games. Utilising water mobility can allow traffic to flow more smoothly in Paris and have people avoid being subject to traffic jams.

Discover more about Bout.

The French start-up Urban Radar, specialised in urban transformation and sustainable city planning, has won the Greentech Innovation label. The label is issued by the French Ministry of Ecological Transition to start-ups and entrepreneurs for their commitment to green and sustainable innovation. Companies are selected based on their ability to demonstrate positive impact on sustainability goals, which is also one of the reasons why EIT Urban Mobility decided to invest in Urban Radar. 

Founded in 2019, Urban Radar is a cloud platform that is revolutionising the way cities manage and regulate their mobility. In 2020, it was selected by EIT Urban Mobility to participate in the Scale-up programme, which allowed the start-up to launch a pilot in Barcelona on curb management and urban logistics.

After this first testing, Urban Radar has decided to expand its markets to Spain. EIT Urban Mobility is glad to support this expansion by offering office space in our headquarters in Barcelona. And the start-up is off to an incredible start. During the BNEW – Barcelona New Economy Week 2022, they were awarded Best Mobility Start-up and received the prize from the Spanish Minister of transportation, Raquel Sanchez. 

Today, the start-up offers three solutions to observe local trends and make data-driven decisions to meet the needs of citizens. With Citizen’s Need they help cities placing proximity-based urbanism at the center of their policies to answer citizen’s needs. Fret impact builds an understanding of freight paters in the peri-urban logistics hubs. And Flexcurb reveals how curb space is allocated and used to highlight opportunities for improvement. 

Discover more about the solutions of Urban Radar on the EIT Urban Mobility Marketplace. 

EIT Urban Mobility and the Moove Lab are joining forces to accelerate the development of mobility start-ups. Their goal? Foster innovation in the European urban mobility landscape.

The Moove Lab is the leading mobility start-up incubator in France, founded in 2017 by MOBILIANS, the French aftermarket automotive professional association and Via ID, the new ventures arm of Mobivia. Based at Station F, the world’s biggest start-up campus located in Paris, the Moove Lab has contributed to the growth of 69 start-ups in 9 promotions, including 6 from other European countries (Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, etc.).

The main purpose of this collaboration is to support the development of the mobility start-up ecosystem in France as well as in Europe. It will open up numerous opportunities on a European scale for French mobility start-ups as well as to EIT Urban Mobility’s pan-European portfolio companies who wish to expand to the French market.

EIT Urban Mobility will choose to invest in certain early stage start-ups recommended by the Moove Lab in order to accompany them throughout their product and business development. These young companies will have access to capital of up to 500.000 euros as well as fast-track introductions to the largest pan-European mobility network. The selected French companies will now have the necessary means to deploy their solutions throughout France and Europe.

Since its creation, EIT Urban Mobility has already invested a total of 3 million euros in 32 mobility startups from 16 European countries. Thanks to the intervention and expertise of the Moove Lab, the organisation will now be able to better target the nuggets that have innovative projects with high potential for tomorrow’s mobility.

As a specialist in coaching, training and mentoring start-ups, the Moove Lab will offer its services to young companies from EIT Urban Mobility portfolio. The selected start-ups will benefit from tailored support from a team of experts from the MOBILIANS and Via ID team, offices in Station F and collaboration opportunities with the Moove Lab’s partners in order to rapidly expand on the French market. Thus, the collaboration will allow European start-ups to discover the French innovation network and eventually establish themselves there.

“We are very pleased about this new collaboration with  EIT Urban Mobility. In 5 years, the Moove Lab has become the leading acceleration programme for all start-ups innovating in mobility. This programme is well established in the long term, with a stronger presence at Station F, and this new partnership reinforces its internationalisation. As a professional organisation, MOBILIANS has a major mission to anticipate changes in mobility and accelerate innovation. Thanks to this new partnership, the Moove Lab brings together all the conditions – in terms of business, benchmarking, coaching and training – for the successful development of our start-ups.” Xavier Horent, Managing Director of MOBILIANS.

“We are particularly pleased to announce this ambitious partnership between the Moove Lab and EIT Urban Mobility, which holds promising opportunities for the French start-up ecosystem. It is clearly in line with the European development of the programme already initiated at the beginning of the year with our partnership with Business France Germany, and more generally with the DNA of Via ID, co-founder of the European Startup Prize for Mobility.” David Schwarz, CEO of Via ID

To help mobility start-ups, EIT Urban Mobility has chosen, through the Moove Lab, a partner located in a strategic place: Paris. The City of Light has become a showcase for urban mobility and a launching pad for start-ups in the field. According to the latest 2021 State of European Mobility Tech Start-ups report published by the Mobility Club report by Via ID in partnership with Dealroom, the capital is ranked in the TOP 5 of mobility start-up hubs in Europe in terms of financing. It even ranks first in terms of the number of mobility start-ups.

“As a leading global ecosystem, the Moove Lab and Station F offer a unique opportunity for Horizon Europe start-ups to gain access to mobility expertise and the French market. This partnership strengthens our mission for more liveable cities by providing support, hot leads and investments for the best start-ups in our field”, says Fredrik Hånell, Business Creation Director at EIT Urban Mobility.

Finally, the goal of this partnership is also to establish the EIT Urban Mobility brand in the French mobility ecosystem. To this end, three Moove Lab x EIT Urban Mobility events will be organised over the next 18 months (conferences, workshops, networking, etc.). Keep an eye on our events calendar to hear more about them.