‘It is easy to take many things in life for granted: our ability to move, to connect with others, to go about our daily activities, to live on this planet and breathe clean air.
Every day is another step in our journey, and how we choose to get there is key.
Public transport is a healthy, sustainable way of life for all. And that’s our choice every day.
We choose ‘Mobility for Life’.

This theme forces us to think about the impact of public transport on the life of the user, but how do we, as the sector, meet these customer expectations and ensure we are truly providing a lifelong mobility solution with services that can always be depended on, no matter the circumstance? How do we guarantee Mobility for Life for our customers?

As we reflect one year later, still in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, there is much to learn from this experience about providing ‘Mobility for Life’ in the most challenging of circumstances.

The Summit programme will address this theme in five main streams:

1: Achieving financial sustainability
2: Building resilient cities with inclusive transport systems
3: Prioritising health and safety
4: Innovating for quality services
5: Engaging with staff and customers

Public transport, cities and businesses thrive simultaneously, putting public transport in a strong position for partnership and supporting funding mechanisms that allow for the mutual success of all three. We have seen the necessity of public transport services, especially in times of crisis: cities simply cannot afford to lose essential mobility services. How can we restructure business models, or improve financial sustainability to ensure the mobility services we offer are for life? Sessions under this stream will explore how to tackle this challenge.

• Rebuilding transport finances after COVID-19: the evolution of funding and investment strategies
• Changing cost structures and their impact
• Complementary revenue sources for public transport
• Public Private Partnerships, managing risks
• The evolution of contracts and governance (risks, business models, tender processes, etc.)
• Fare policies

To address future and ongoing challenges such as urbanisation and climate change, it is crucial for our sector to help optimise limited urban space with the goal of building more liveable cities. How do we do that? With inclusive urban planning, that prioritises mass public transport as the backbone of the city and complementing this with active modes, on demand and shared services. The perfect transport system looks different from city to city: these elements are building blocks to help define your ideal long-term mobility solution.

• Governance in time of changes
• Setting up transport authorities
• Corporatisation of informal transport
• Articulating urban transport policies to improve accessibility for more liveable & competitive cities
• Ensuring complementarity between public transport, walking and cycling, and new mobility services in the urban fabric:  from tactical urbanism to new urban transport systems and infrastructures
• Planning the changing pace of cities
• Managing the demand for mobility
• Redefining PT for accelerating the improvement of the urban environment
• Decarbonising cities and their transport system
• Taxi and ride-hailing also keep cities moving

As we reflect on the challenging months behind us, and look forward to the years ahead, we can certainly agree that the health and safety of our customers and workers remain the top priority. The guaranteed health and safety for all must be the minimum requirement for any operational mobility service. On the other hand, we must also highlight the health benefits of an efficient public transport system in cities. Public transport, together with other active, shared and collective modes of transport are critical to manage the health impact of urban mobility by improving road safety, as well as by reducing the impact of mobility on air pollution.

• Integrating the health benefits of public transport intervention
• Health and safety of workers and travelers
• Public transport lifestyle, active travel, and health
• How to manage future pandemics
• Road safety and vehicle safety

Public transport implies operational excellence. We must continually strive to improve the efficiency and quality of transport operations and services, particularly in line with the ongoing digital transformation of our sector, in order to meet mobility demands and address new challenges. What are some of the latest innovations and technological trends that can optimise our bus and rail operations, increase our cost efficiency and make our systems future-proof? The Summit aims to put top trends in operational excellence in the spotlight.

• Roll-out and management of E-Bus fleets, including models of integration with the infrastructure
• Energy transition strategies in urban and regional transport and their impact on the ecosystem
• Deploying and integrating autonomous vehicles including autonomous buses and shuttles, on the urban and regional transport networks
• Integrating shared and collective mobility services with mass public transport, MaaS and beyond
• Deploying on demand transport solutions
• Rethinking and optimising network design and service supply as a result of the deployment of new services and systems
• From automation to autonomy in rail transport
• Ticketing & payment
• Crowd and capacity management in public transport
• Traffic management and intelligent transport systems, including C-ITS in urban and public transport
• Life Cycle Costing and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
• Innovative technologies applied to maintenance (Artificial intelligence, Augmented Reality, robotics, etc.)

Public transport is a service provided by people for people: the happiness of both staff and customer are essential to the success of our business in the long run. How do we properly engage staff and customers, and create a culture of trust and loyalty between both? The Summit aims to identify the necessary elements of building a strong corporate and employer brand to both engage and delight staff and customers.

• Leadership and staff engagement
• Gender inclusive mobility planning
• Diversity in public transport
• Engaging with the connected customer
• (re)Building trust
• Accelerating social changes, what impact on public transport?
• Creative mobility & art in transit
• The ongoing challenge of delivering excellence in customer experience
• Training the workforce of tomorrow