The new event merges Smart City Expo World Congress' Mobility track together with BcnRail
The new Smart Mobility World Congress to focus on the future of smart urban and inter-city transport
This year’s Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the leading international event on smart cities to be held from 14–16 November at Fira de Barcelona’s Gran Vía venue, will host the first Smart Mobility World Congress, a smart transport summit resulting from the merge of Fira de Barcelona’s railway industry show BcnRail and the SCEWC’s own mobility track. The event will be held yearly and will showcase the most innovative advances in urban and inter-city mobility.
The Smart Mobility World Congress will have its own space within SCEWC, where specialist mobility companies will be grouped together, and it will also have its own auditorium for transport conferences, the Smart Mobility Hub. Also, to enhance the role of the rail sector, it will host the congress of ALAMYS, the Latin American Metro and Underground Railway Association.
The President of the new event will be the Managing Director of the Catalan State rail company Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC) and current Vice-President of the International Association of Public Transport (UITP), Pere Calvet. In Mr Calvet’s words, ‘the new event will cover a key space for development of the cities of the future, addressing one of their greatest challenges, citizen mobility. We aim to take an innovative all-round approach to urban and inter-city mobility that will help us find solutions to future challenges from a smart multimodal perspective. Each type of transport must play a role if we are to respond to the questions posed by an ever-increasing urban population, and the Smart Mobility World Congress will be a key tool in achieving that’.
Pere Calvet is a Civil Engineer with 25 years’ professional experience in the railway sector. He has been the Managing Director of FGC since 2011, having previously been the Chief Technical Officer of the public entity Infraestructures Ferroviàries de Catalunya (Ifercat). He also belongs to different Spanish and international transport bodies such as the Barcelona Metropolitan Transport Authority (ATM) and the Association of Urban Public Transport Operators (ATUC), and he has been President of the Underground Railway Division and Global Vice-President of the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) since 2013.
International urban summit
Holding the Smart Mobility World Congress together with the SCEWC will create a unique urban knowledge platform. At the last event, in 2016, the SCEWC broke its all-time attendance record by bringing together 600 cities and 16,688 visitors, 30% more than in 2015, 55% of them from abroad. The attendees were able to pool their experiences, discover the latest solutions showcased by the 591 exhibitors and learn from the 420 experts taking part in the congress. The event focused on the strategies and tools available for enhancing citizens’ empowerment and for their greater involvement in municipal processes and design.
Barcelona, April 3rd 2017