Recommendations for actions concerning supporting ITS developments for VRUs

Abstract

Introduction: This paper presents some of the work conducted in FP7 VRUITS project to draw a set of general recommendations for actions at the EU level aiming to enhance the deployment of ITS systems directed to improve the safety, mobility and comfort of vulnerable road users. Method: The work started by identifying potential barriers, as well as recommendations to overcome these barriers. After that, similar recommendations were combined and prioritised, which are discussed via a workshop and questionnaire. In addition, a qualitative analysis was used to select thirteen main recommendations, for which a quantitative Benefit Analyses and a Multi-Criteria analysis were conducted. Results: In total, over 200 barriers and recommendations were identified for the 10 selected ITS systems. After several steps 13 main general recommendations were selected and ranked according to priority. Conclusions: 1) A wide range of different type of measures directed to different stakeholders is needed 2) Focus should be on facilitating the implementation of the 13 main recommendations, 3) Benefits of implementation of the recommendations can be in the order of billion(s) of euros, and 4) Main challenges are achieving cooperation between the different stakeholders, the different environments, the long time horizon for implementation and the high implementation costs.