UPPER aims at spearheading a Public Transport revolution that will strengthen the role of PT as the flagship of sustainability and innovation of mobility in cities, leading the transition towards a zero emission mobility which will become the cornerstone of climate neutrality by 2030, in line with the goal of Cities Mission and the priorities of the Green Deal. UPPER will put the Public Transport at the centre of the mobility ecosystem and will implement a combination of 84 push and pull measures, acting on the 5 innovation axes that condition user’s choices: mindset and culture, urban mobility planning, mobility services ecosystem, road network management and democratic governance. These measures will act in 4 different timescales (from shorter to longer-term): communication, operations, infrastructure and urban fabric. The UPPER measures will be supported by the UPPER Toolkit (U-TWIN, U-SIM, U-NEED, U-GOV, U-KNOW, U-TRANSFER and U-SUMP), 7 IT tools combining social and technological innovation that will be demonstrated within the measures in the 5+5 UPPER living labs and twinning sites, with the overall target of increasing the use of public transport by >30% and the user satisfaction by >25%, leaving nobody behind in the process. This integrated and holistic approach will ease the cooperation among authorities and operators, offer a physical and digital environment to test the measures, update the existing SUMPs, optimise the PT offer in line with user needs and patterns, involve the users in the overall mobility decision chain, trigger the behavioural change in favour of Public Transport and achieve an attractive, efficient, reliable, safe, inclusive and affordable Public Transport system in line with the concept of Mobility as a Right (MaaR)

Through SUMPs-Up, an experienced consortium of public and private organisations, including four major city networks and seven frontrunner cities, skilled in coordinating major European SUMP projects will accelerate the take-up of SUMPs, where this is currently low, ensuring that SUMP is the primary mobility planning concept in Europe. To achieve this, the project will combine comprehensive SUMP research, tailored capacity-building, strong mechanisms for technical support, as well as constant SUMP monitoring and evaluation. As a result, the project will accelerate the development of 100 SUMPs, reach out to 600 cities and will therefore engage about 80% of the EU-cities above 50,000 inhabitants. SUMPs-Up will review, strengthen and integrate existing SUMP resources, designing a support system to assist cities to develop high quality SUMPs. A SUMP Tool Inventory will help mobility planners make better informed decisions about which planning tools to apply in their local context. This will be enriched with experiences from the city partners who will be testing innovative solutions in SUMP preparation and implementation. The SUMPs Up Innovation Pilot Pool will create a mechanism that allows identifying and validating the most effective concepts, approaches and methodologies in SUMP practice for different framework conditions and different types of cities, complemented by a peer learning programme, to leverage resources and enable more cities to apply the SUMP concept. At Member State level, SUMPs-Up will foster exchange to improve national SUMP frameworks. Close monitoring and evaluation of the project and supported activities will show evidence of the SUMP concept’s value and serve as a quality control mechanism for both project activities and the SUMPs being developed. SUMPs-Up will broadly communicate the positive impacts of SUMPs, producing and disseminating insightful reports and research. Ultimately, SUMPs-Up will stimulate a European movement of mobility planning authorities experienced in preparing and implementing SUMPs in compliance with the European requirements.

MITHOS project aims to transform multimodal transport infrastructure management through an innovative AI-driven Decision Support System (DSS). Multimodal transport is crucial to advance safer, more resilient and sustainable mobility solutions for both passengers and freight. However, currently the sector faces significant challenges, including inefficient interconnections between transport modes, high operational costs, and fragmented data management. Existing tools often focus narrowly on specific modes with lack of integration, leading to suboptimal decision-making processes and they do not fulfil with FAIR principles on their data management processes. MITHOS addresses these mayor issues by developing a comprehensive and cloud-based platform that centralizes diverse data sources into a unified and intelligent Federated Smart Data (FSD) module, allowing real-time data collection and integration, which is connected to an AI-based DSS for multi-criteria optimization with an interactive HMI visualization. MITHOS framework includes a Bundle of Fundamental Tools (BFT) for enhanced simulation on multimodal infrastructure assessment and as well as to an Impact Assessment module/SAAS for evaluating the overall benefits and compliance of MITHOS´ proposed measures. MITHOS will be implemented in 4 diverse pilot sites: Bilbao, Hamburg, Vienna/Linz, and Thessaloniki in order to validate its effectiveness across different multimodal contexts/coexistence and infrastructure types. By involving real end-users in the development of this project, MITHOS aims to become the future leading global multimodal traffic infrastructure management platform, promoting safer, more efficient and sustainable transport both inside (first) and outside (second) Europe.

SUNRISE will develop, implement, assess and facilitate learning about new, collaborative ways to address common mobility challenges at the neighbourhood level. Towards this aim, 6 cities will foster collaborative processes in specific neighbourhoods as “Neighbourhood Mobility Labs” with the explicit mandate to implement innovative solutions for and with their residents, businesses etc. SUNRISE rests on several pillars: A) Utilisation of neighbourhood-specific opportunities. B) Co-creation of solutions, i.e. through strategic civic-public alliances C) Socio-technical nature of solutions as combinations of services, social arrangements, rules, technologies or small infrastructures etc. D) New forms of synergies between bottom-up and top-down. All SUNRISE activities are structured along the following phases of the innovation chain: 1) Co-identification of mobility problems; 2) Co-planning / co-selection of solutions; 3) Co-implementation of solutions; 4) Co-evaluation; 5) Co-learning and uptake. The SUNRISE action neighbourhoods will use a blend of proven state-of-the-art online and face-to-face participation techniques and will establish longer-term collaborative forums. These will systematically involve citizens, businesses, NGOs, local authorities, academics etc. – always with a view to also involve under-empowered sections of the population like migrants, women, older and young people. Alongside the mobility benefits for the action neighbourhoods, the project will result in a suite of products – most prominently the SUNRISE Neighbourhood Mobility Pathfinder – which will be provided to European cities, their stakeholders and citizens through a powerful exchange process to inspire and inform change across Europe. This will include a group of 20 Take-Up neighbourhoods and various city networks in cooperation with CIVITAS. In strategic terms, SUNRISE will lay the foundation for a Sustainable Neighbourhood Mobility Planning concept (SNMP) to complement SUMPs.