This March 2025 I am happy to have dedicated 4 full days (out of a total of 21 working days) to attend three interesting events: the “ITS UK Annual conference” in Manchester, the conference on “Horizon Europe Showcase – Celebrating one year of association“, and the “Connected Places Summit“, both held in London.
The Horizon Europe event represented the opportunity to celebrate one year since the UK was re-admitted to take part in Horizon Europe projects as an Associated Country and work in virtually every field and with any role (partners or coordinator).
It was extremely good to see many people attending the event and I really hope the scepticism that was heavily felt in the past years has been now dissolved. After the terrible results of the Brexit referendum in 2016, I remember the feeling people and companies had towards EU funding. In those days, the UK was still a EU Member State and able to apply to any funding scheme (e.g. I coordinated two Erasmus+ projects in those years) but, when talking with people, the common perception was: “We are not applying to EU fundings because our proposals will be rejected when the evaluators read there are Brits in the consortium“. I spent thousands of words explaining that this was not only absolutely wrong, but also false.
Then, in Jan 2021 the UK officially exited the EU and for a while the country could not apply to EU fundings.
After a while, with all UK universities willing to take part in EU projects as they really valued international collaboration, a hybrid solution was found: UK companies could participated in Horizon Europe only (no longer Erasmus+, for instance) and their funding would have been paid for by the UK government, generating a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy. Just few UK companies showed interest in making this tiring experience.
Some EU-UK negotiations then followed and in Sept 2023 it was agreed the UK be officially considered as a country associated to the Horizon Europe and able to fully join the programme as of 01 Jan 2024.
I really hope a new wave of enthusiasm will be generated about working on HEU project proposals and if, by the way, any of you could be interested, please get in touch as we at EPN Consulting are ready to help UK companies take part in international project consortia!
A couple of words on the other two ITS/Transport events that were both interesting and the topics discussed quite good. However, I heard two concepts that made me think.
One regarded the Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) and one speaker asked the audience whether it could be a good solutions for our cities today. Strange question: DRT was very much discussed between the end of 1990s and beginning of 2000s and by now I considered the theme consolidated.
Some DRT implementations in the UK and Europe did a good job and generated benefits. Is there the case, after 25-30 years, for (re)introducing it? Of course! I have always thought that DRT could be a good solution as an additional layer to an advanced and ITS-based public transport network, thanks to its agility and economy of scale (especially for evening/night services and rural areas).
The other concept regarded a comment I heard in one Summit session: “A good public transport service musts ensure precision, buses should arrive on time to encourage citizens’ use“. Wow, what a deep analysis! This was one common discussions had in the 1990s when the novel ITS experts were trying to convince transport managers to accept that electronics would help humans manage transport fleets to ensure a better use of resources and increase precision (a.k.a. reliability) of the buses arrivals at stops.
I have been in the ITS field since mid 1990s and in those days I would have never thought that 30 years later I would have still heard such trivial comments. Maybe, were we in those days too advanced when we thought we were not?
Stefano Mainero
EPN Consulting and EPN Consulting Research and Innovation Founder & CEO
Article written by human beings without any use of AI. EPN Consulting Ltd. copyright 2025
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