Improving West Harbour - Old City Harbour mobility flows with smart solutions

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Mobility is growing in Europe. The ferry connection between Helsinki West Harbour and Tallinn Old City Harbour is one of the busiest in the world with over 8 million annual passangers. The North Sea - Baltic TEN T Core corridor meets Scandinavian-Mediterranean TEN T core corridor at Helsinki, thus being a key node in the transport networks of northern Europe. Yet, already the current traffic creates substantial congestion, noise and other negative externalities at both ports and at both cities. There has not been common mobility planning and there are no cross-border ITS solutions. The project provides more fluent integration of different transport modes of this inter-city and cross-border traffic with planning and piloting of ICT-driven solutions, in order to reduce time in transportation for both passengers and cargo. The better flow reduces both time vehicles spend in port areas as well as the fluency of the traffic flow. This will also reduce CO2 emissions and noise. Also, lack of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) has been described as one of main missing links for the North Sea Baltic corridor. Cross-border approach is needed in order ensure end-to-end user-centric experience of the mobility as well as better planning: same or similar tools for the mobility users on both ports, tools for the ferry operators, urban planners, and data. Project contributes directly to the Central Baltic programme indicators R3.3 and R3.1 by piloting smart solutions that will reduce the travel time. The project contributes to these targets also indirectly: by contributing to open data and open source enablers for further innovations, and by mobility planning (SUMP) that further enable and drive towards travel time reduction in the mobility. Project creates also market references for smart port solution provider companies.

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