ELTIS training course and study tour takes place in Budapest

By Gabor Heves

DOWNTIME: Workshop participants took a field trip to the contruction site of Budapest's fourth metro line under construction. Photos: Gabor Heves

The REC co-organised and hosted a training seminar on April 14-16 for mid-career urban transport professionals (i.e. those who have worked for between one and five years in the field). More than 50 participants attended the event, both from new member states of the European Union and new neighbouring countries. The seminar was the third of four scheduled ELTIS trainings.

The topics covered during the seminar were urban cycling, urban road safety and traffic management, while the training staff included experts from leading European universities (e.g. the UK's Napier University and Germany's Dresden Technical University) and consultancies (e.g. Belgium-based Mobiel 21). For those who could not attend the event, all training materials are available for free from the ELTIS website.

Seminar participants also visited the following in downtown Budapest: a metro station under construction right next to the Danube; the local transport company's traffic control centre; and a bicycle courier company that helped to co-organise the extremely successful Critical Mass biking event in Budapest (the Earth Day event, according to organiser estimates, attracted 80,000 participants).

Developed in a highly interactive way, the course also provided an opportunity for participants to present their own initiatives. One such initiative was the VECTOR project, in which concentrations of particulate matters are measured and recorded in actual traffic situations with a camera and measurement device mounted on a bicycle.

The course was organised by a European project consortium that runs Europe's number-one web portal on urban transport and mobility: the European Local Transport Information Service (ELTIS). The portal features news, events, training materials and more than a thousand case studies. If you have implemented or know of an implemented action in your town, do not hesitate to submit it to our database: You can win fun and valuable prizes! Entering case studies also won't take much of your time: They're short (less than a page), and it's easy to submit new entries online (click "submit" in the section "case studies").

Further information on the above topics is available at www.eltis.org, www.vectorproject.eu and www.criticalmass.hu/english.