KIC Urban Mobility — TUM shapes the mobility of the future!
The Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), are legally independent partnerships of universities, science organizations, companies and other stakeholders that address selected future topics of societal relevance at EU level. To this end, the partners involved are to develop new products, training concepts or services and fertilize the start-up scene.
The 85+ international partners of the
EIT Urban Mobility
want to develop solutions for sustainable urban transport. One of the 5 Innovation Hubs was created in Munich. The EU is contributing around 400 million euros to the major project, which is worth billions and is based in Barcelona.
Air pollution, congested roads, gaps in the public transport network — the pressure on urban transport is growing. At the same time, attractive public space, comfortable mobility and a say for the population in urban planning are becoming increasingly important. The consortium “MOBiLus” has set itself the goal of finding mobility solutions for livable cities. The acronym stands for “Mobility for Liveable Urban Spaces.”
The core consortium was formed in 2015 by the EuroTech Alliance TU Munich, Denmark’s Technical University (DTU), École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL ) and TU Eindhoven (TU/e) . A total of eleven European universities are now represented in the consortium, and TUM is the only German one. Global companies such as E.ON, BMW, Siemens and SEAT are on board.
UnternehmerTUM, the center for innovation and start-up at TUM, is also one of the partners. UnternehmerTUM was named a Digital Hub Mobility by the German government in 2016. Thirteen cities are also participating in the major project, including Copenhagen, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Prague, Istanbul and Munich.
The central conflict of urban mobility is reflected in the lower case of “i” and “us”, the English words for “I” and “we”, in the name “MOBiLus”. “We have individual interests from the business community that we have to bring together with the public interests of a city,” explains Gebhard Wulfhorst, Professor of Settlement Structure and Transportation Planning and coordinator of the project at TUM. “This is the key to sustainable development.” An important goal is therefore to increase the involvement of citizen representatives in the projects.
Making cities more livable is also a major challenge. “The most precious resource in the city is space, and space is limited,” Wulfhorst explains. One goal of MOBiLus is to make a portion of the area currently used by motor vehicle traffic available for other public uses.
TUM President Emeritus Wolfgang A. Herrmann said: “Mobility and intelligent traffic and transport systems are a strong profile area of research at TUM — well proven in the regional environment, but also at our Asian location in Singapore, where TUM.CREATE researches mobility concepts for megacities.”
