Aims

UPPER will put the Public Transport at the centre of the mobility ecosystem by implementing a combination of 84 push and pull measures, acting on the 5 innovation axes that condition users’ 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. UPPER measures will be supported by the UPPER Measures Implementation Support Toolkit (U-TWIN, U-SIM, U-NEED, U-GOV, U-KNOW, U-TRANSFER and U-SUMP) and demonstrated 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).

To deal with the ambitious concept of UPPER, the project objectives can be mapped into 7 Specific Objectives:

• SO1: To understand the needs of different urban areas, user groups and dependencies between public transport and active travel modes


• SO2: To establish a local policy framework and innovative spatial planning to promote a sustainable and public transport-oriented culture in line with the SUMPs


• SO3: To co-create new local solutions and services to improve the overall PT offer and attractiveness in line with users’ needs and expectations and trigger behavioural change


• SO4: Develop a set of cross-pilot supporting tools as an integrated and replicable approach to plan, test, evaluate and upscale mobility measures


• SO5: Implement packages of “push and pull” urban mobility measures in the living labs, supported by the UPPER toolkit, to improve the overall PT share in the modal distribution


• SO6: To establish new solutions, strategies and business models, where public transport and mobility providers cooperate to offer services addressing user needs


• SO7: To ease and accelerate the transferability of results, cooperation and uptake of replicable public transport solutions.

UPPER's concept relies on the idea that cities, their authorities and transport operators are the ones who know the needs and must define the set of measures that will allow PT to become the backbone of mobility in cities. By this reason, UPPER will put the research and innovation at the service of cities, transport authorities and operators, both for designing and developing the packages of “push and pull” measures and by the UPPER Measures Support Toolkit conceived for co-designing, simulating, monitoring, evaluating and scaling-up the different “push and pull” proposed measures.