A modal shift to green transport is urgently needed as congestion, pollution, growing population and health problems threaten the livability of urban areas. Cycling has proven to be a major solution for these challenges. Not only as separate mode but also as a part of the multimodal transport system. More cycling data is urgently needed to position cycling within the multimodal transport system and to improve the system as a whole. Regions involved in BITS already show a high bicycle use (NL, DK, BE) or have ambition to increase bicycle use (UK, DE). Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) are important tools to achieve this, while also producing the desired cycling data.

The project will kickstart ITS in cycling by:

• Implementing ITS solutions that directly increase the take-up of cycling (+10%) and reduce CO2 emission (-9%) within target groups 
• Sharing cycling data and building a CyclingDataHub to share, analyse and visualize the data ( >100 data sets)
• Use collected data to get better insight in the needs of cyclists to drastically improve cycling policies
• Integrate the ITS methodologies and datasets into broader multi-modality, thus anchoring cycling in broader mobility policies and share this data for a multimodal future

The demonstration of ITS applications and cycling data will allow others to use these cycling data for applications and policies. The effectiveness of ITS solutions will be evaluated, challenges identified and results disseminated to other regions.
BITS is an Interreg project supported by the North Sea Programme of the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union.

2019 - 2022

• Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jorge Marx Gómez (Coordinator)
• Johannes Schering (Project assistant)

northsearegion.eu/bits/