The Spanish railway mobility innovation cluster, RAILWAY INNOVATION HUB, and the country’s most important cluster in the development of smart cities, SMART CITY CLUSTER, have started the work that, jointly, they will develop for effective and real integration of the railway sector in the first and last mile strategies.

The ‘Smart Train Smart’ project, the first collaborative project launched by Railway Innovation Hub, was presented during the day ‘Innovative solutions in rail mobility’ that took place in Malaga with the assistance of more than one hundred people and whose main objective is to apply advanced technologies to freight traffic by rail.

As explained by the director of the technical coordination of RIH, José Antonio López de la O, and the general director of the Smart City Cluster, Daniel González Bootello, it is about combining all the technological solutions that the sector can provide railway along with those of other modes of transport, so that modal transfer to the railroad is favored.

López de la O has assured that this collaborative project that Railway Innovation Hub starts with the Smart City Cluster will also try to take advantage of the innovation resulting from the added value provided by technologies to promote intelligent mobility.

The director of the technical coordination of RIH has assured that the project ‘Smart Train Smart’ has the objective of involving the railroad in the strategies of the smart cities, for which it is sought to increase the transport of goods and parcel end-to- end towards the railroad through the application of smart technologies for the digitization of the first and last mile.

Ultimately, it is, said López de la O, to improve people’s lives by contributing to create “better cities” by considerably reducing traffic in urban environments and thus contributing to reducing air pollution.

In this regard, López de la O recalled that the European Commission considers railway operations as one of the key elements to decongest transport and to ensure sustainable urban mobility, while urging urban centers to consolidate a transport model railroad that respects the environment and increases its competitiveness by improving relevant products and services.

For his part, González Bootello has insisted that intelligent technologies are constantly rethinking mobility and proposed to the railway sector that, within the framework of this collaborative project, work should begin to place the user at the center of the processes, with the so that the train can offer differentiating elements on other modes of transport. To that end, he said, that collaboration would be key to offer better door-to-door travel experiences and position the railway sector clearly in the great advantage it offers in terms of environmental costs.

UNIVERSAL ACCESSIBILITY FOR THE SEASONS

Both speakers have insisted that this project also aims to take advantage of technologies to “make people’s lives easier”. In this sense, one of the jobs that both clusters are going to develop is to improve universal accessibility at railway stations. Thus, they have assured, “we are going to investigate new intelligent techniques” that are applicable to make the stations more passable for all those people who have mobility problems”.

The ‘Smart Train Smart’ collaborative project is aimed at all companies associated with both the Railway Innovation Hub and the Smart City Cluster, and multidisciplinary working groups will be created to finally apply the different solutions to the market.

López de la O explained that large lines of action will be initiated in this collaborative project that will also investigate unified ticketing of multimodal transport, the application of smart technologies to achieve stations that are more accessible for the reception and dispatch of merchandise or the development of new logistics technologies.