CIPTEC - Co-creating collectively the future of Public Transport

CIPTEC (Collective Innovation for Public Transport in European Cities) is an EU Horizon 2020 project, addressing the challenge for “Smart, Green and Integrated Transport” and a CIVITAS knowledge generating project in the area of “Tackling urban congestion”. The main aim of the project is to bring new thinking and innovative solutions to Public Transport by active civil involvement and through collective intelligence methods (crowdsourcing and co-creation) that help to create a favorable environment for the growth of Public Transport. The project started in May 2015 and will run for 36 months.

Since Spring 2016, CIPTEC has been exploring the ‘unknown’ through the co-creation of new emerging ideas that might spark new solutions in the field of urban transport by a bottom-up approach. In this context, new, innovative solutions were suggested and evaluated with the aid of eight co-creation workshops which were organized between May and December 2016 in four urban areas – Thessaloniki, Southern Tuscany, Rotterdam and Frankfurt. The overall scope of CIPTEC co-creation workshops was to generate innovative concepts, both services and products that could build on public transport and contribute to its attractiveness and market share (check this video for the 1st co-creation workshop in Thessaloniki).

In total, 209 participants with different backgrounds, such as public transport users and non-users, PTAs’ and PTOs’ representatives, as well as experts in the field of public transport and relevant professional sectors, attended the workshops. Eleven co-creation methods were used (e.g. Brainstorming, World Café, Role playing, Dilemma Thinking), while 165 co-creation concepts came up. Finally, the workshops generated 17 main concepts to innovate public transport. In the next phase of the project these concepts will be further assessed e.g. on innovativeness, usefulness and feasibility.

In addition to the co-creation workshops, European citizens are welcomed to share their views and perspectives about the future of Public Transport and submit innovative ideas in the context of the crowdsourcing campaign that is now ongoing. To this end a user-friendly platform is accessible through: http://europe.ciptec.eu are taking place at local site level with a focus on the urban areas of Frankfurt, South Tuscany, Rotterdam and Thessaloniki, in the respective national languages. The main aim of these platforms is the collection of ideas and suggestions for innovative concepts, like practices and business models for the Public Transport sector, from the needs and perspective of each of the four mentioned areas.

The crowdsourcing actions are addressed to all users and non-users of public transport and aim at strengthening interaction, cooperation and communication with the public to support improvement of the public transport system. Beyond the motivation derived from the participation, dialogue and joy of collaborative creation themselves, best ideas will be rewarded as an incentive to participate in this unique ‘social experiment’.

In parallel, a survey towards promising innovations and on identifying their relevance and their potential in improving the experience from using Public Transport in European Cities is currently running. The aim of the survey is to explore the preferences of both users and non-users for certain innovations, and reveal hidden groups of (potential) users. By filling in the questionnaire, citizens can co-design with CIPTEC project partners the future of Public Transport and improve the quality of urban life.

All CIPTEC project’s initiatives and results are accessible at the CIPTEC website and are included in CIPTEC project deliverables. All CIPTEC project’s deliverables made public so far are available for downloading: http://ciptec.eu/deliverables.

Partners participated in a formal project meeting hosted by European Passenger Federation in Ghent on 24th and 25th of January to plan and schedule project activities for the next period. On the 26th of January 2017 CIPTEC was called to account for the research deliverables made so far in a midterm review meeting in Brussels with representatives of INEA.

The next project meeting will take place in Sienna on May 2017 and it will be combined with a special workshop. During the workshop, project partners and external experts will provide feedback for the evaluation of ideas, which have arisen from the co-creation workshops and the crowdsourcing platforms.

For more information about CIPTEC, please visit its website: http://ciptec.eu/ and subscribe for the [CIPTEC newsletter-http://ciptec.eu/newsletter/].