'Smart mobility can help in reducing congestion in urban cities'

AMMAN — Participants in a conference that kicked off on Wednesday to tackle the issue of smart mobility in urban cities will explore the best solutions to overcome road congestion in Amman.

Organised by the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM), the two-day event comes as part of the CREATE project, a three-year research funded by the European Union to address the problem of urban road congestion and the extent to which smart solutions can help cities transition towards sustainable mobility.

The rapid growth of cities more than ever requires their administrations to adopt the "smart city model" especially in light of always more complex social, economic and technological networks challenges, said Hazem Neimat, deputy mayor of GAM.

Efficient usage of information and telecommunication technologies is greatly needed to develop creative solutions for urban sustainability issues such as water, energy and transportation, Neimat added. 

CREATE advisory board member David Bull said that 3 million euros were spent on the project to study ways to reduce road congestions. "We do not have to build new roads instead we need to look for healthy and more efficient methods to reach sustainable growth in cities,” he said. 

Meanwhile, a representative of the EU delegation to Jordan, Olfa Alouini, stressed that achieving sustainable and inclusive cities requires joint efforts by the government, operators of transportation services and users to reduce road congestions, noting that CREATE project is part of the Horizon 2020 project.

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU research and innovation programme, with nearly 80 billion euros of funding available over seven years (2014-2020), in addition to the private investment stemming from this funding, she explained, noting that it aims to produce world-first breakthroughs and discoveries by "taking great ideas from the lab to the market". 

During a panel titled "To what extent can smart mobility accelerate a transition towards sustainable mobility in growing cities", leader of the project's Future Developments’ Work Package Tom Cohen reviewed transport technologies developing around the world like autonomous vehicles and new methods making use of old transportation such as minibuses to reduce traffic. 

Smart does not necessarily mean new but rather rediscovering new ways to use old things, Cohen stressed following presentations by transportation experts from London and Vienna. 

He noted that the project studied the history of mobility in modern cities and how such techniques were progressively developed in order to help cities like Amman, which is witnessing rapid growth in population and car ownership, to avoid the mistakes made in the past.