More and more people want to travel by public transport. In the Utrecht province, a densely populated area in the centre of the Netherlands, public transport demand is high. Together, all busses and trams serve around 200,000 users a day. In this presentation, we focus on how the Provincial government Utrecht developed its public transport network in order to meet this increased demand and the expectation of travellers. In addition, we describe the next steps towards a new public transport contract for our future operations. 
There are multiple challenges for the future such as improving the connectivity of core economic areas and supporting the accessibility of new housing developments. In addition, there is a challenge to relieve the crowdedness at our main transport hubs and to improve the first-and-last mile. Therefore, the Provincial government Utrecht is exploring network restructuring and expansion such as a new public transport ring around the city that connects secondary nodes, a new BRT or tram connection to the southern suburbs and a new secondary railway node with national rail services. With regards to the last-mile, we would like to emphasis recently studied conduct in collaboration with Delft University of Technology. 
The central topic of this study were the preferences of PT travellers to use shared modes in the last-mile. We found that mainly younger people consider the use of shared modes in the last-mile. Given the considered modes: bicycles, e-bikes, e-scooters and e-mopeds, most travellers seem to prefer the cycling modes. This and other scientific research helps us in our efforts towards future public transport.

Despite its relatively small size, Luxembourg City is facing major challenges in terms of traffic congestion (33h/person/year spent in traffic congestion according to the INRIX 2017 Global Traffic Scorecard), primarily caused by an important share of cross-border commuters driving more than 35km on average for home-work trips, and the highest car ownership rate in the European Union (0.75 vehicles/person). With the goal of reducing the car pressure and promote sustainable mobility, the country is heavily investing on public transport (PT) and in particular on new technologies that enable smart and cleaner transport. Three trends towards next generation PT systems are observed: 1) introduction of greener vehicles such as electric/hybrid buses (e-buses), 2) focus on high service quality (e.g. increased ride comfort via mitigation of stop-and-go driving) and 3) reduction of emissions and bus operating costs related to fuel/energy consumption and equipment wear and tear. In addition, the digital revolution is offering new opportunities to empower vehicles with new Information and Communication Technologies enabling the adoption of Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) and new ways of managing the system in a more efficient way. These trends however bring new challenges. The first challenge is posed by different operational characteristics and constraints of e-buses, e.g. they need to periodically recharge batteries at e-charging stations placed in selected stops and terminals. This brings additional complexity into PT operations since charging may have an impact on line scheduling. The second challenge, relating trends 2 and 3, is how to provide comfort- and cost-related benefits without negatively impacting general traffic performance. Relying solely on strategies such as Transit Signal Priority (TSP), which prioritizes PT vehicles at signalized intersections, might cause congestion effects that could backfire on the PT system itself. In this study we argue that we can make better use of e-buses and the C-ITS paradigm by introducing new strategies explicitly optimizing the interactions within the PT ecosystem components consisting of PT vehicles, traffic signals, and electric bus charging infrastructure. The main novelty of eCoBus is that these strategies combine cooperation and negotiation within the whole PT ecosystem, enabled by C-ITS connectivity. The main research challenges are in formulating and solving complex optimization problems to manage the fleet at the planning phase, while developing novel real-time control strategies to better manage the vehicles at the operational phase. The proposed system is tested and evaluated in large-scale simulations and in real-world controlled experiments supported by our PT industry partners—Volvo Buses and Sales-Lentz (PT operator).

Land-transportation can´t further meet its demands. Crowded highways, crowded cities, dangerous emissions, traffic accidents, delays, expensive railways. Solutions are being sought to transfer a large part of passengers- and especially freight-traffic to (high-speed) rail and to go electromobility, car-sharing, 5G-connectivity, autonomous ride, MaaS-transport-coordination, Hyperloop-type solutions. However, all these solutions have other problems and limitations. Solutions are not sought where they really exist - in the mutual adaptation of road and rail vehicles and their deep cooperation. ComplexTrans-project shows that simply adapting dimensions and functions of road and rail vehicles can eliminate (at least substantially reduce) all the problems of existing land transport, resulting in - ample parking space, - reduced traffic density in and outside of cities, - electric-vehicles with unlimited range and cheaper than standard cars, cheaper and easy affordable recharging of batteries, - pseudo autonomous ride, - transfer of intercity freight to rail, - replacing part of continental air-transport, - self-financing rail-transport, - deep cooperation with renewable energy resources sun and wind - significant reduction of energy consumption in transport, - independence of oil and a significant possibility for emissions reduction, - resistance to the transmission of communicable diseases - and many others. The main components of the ComplexTrans system are - high-speed trains (200 km/h) consisting of passenger-freight double-decker coaches and connected fast rail cargo cars - road transport modules for cargo or passengers - adapted cars with changed dimensions, design and functions and follow-up systems - passenger-freight (semi) rail/road terminals and support systems. Railways have been developing independently for more than 200 years, cars for more than 125 years. By combining road and rail transport into one transportation system, we can obtain an optimal land transport system that eliminates almost all of the problems of current transport better than other currently developed transport solutions. Based on new combination of existing technologies and infrastructure only.