Conclusions of the 7th International Conference
’’Тowards a Humane City‘‘

On 6^th and 7^th December 2019, in Novi Sad, the international conference “Towards a Humane City”, with the topic “Environmentally Friendly Mobility” was held in the premises of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Vojvodina. The conference organizers were Department of Traffic Engineering at Faculty of Technical Sciences of University of Novi Sad, Provincial Secretariat for Energy, Construction and Transport, and Association “Humane City” from Novi Sad.

The conference was organized under the auspices of the Assembly of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and City of Novi Sad. It was also supported by Provincial Secretariat for Higher Education and Scientific Research of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.

The conference was supported by a lot of international and national institutions such as: CIVITAS City Networks CiViNET Slovenia-Croatia-Southeast Europe, City of Banja Luka, Administration of the City of Belgrade-Secretariat for Public Transport, Regional development Agency Srem, The Public City Transport Enterprise of Novi Sad, PUC “Parkig servis” Novi Sad, Serbian Chamber of Engineers, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Vojvodina. There were about 150 conferees from more than a dozen of different countries (Great Britain, Spain, Belgium, Australia, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, the Republic of North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia…).

The formal reception of Program Committee members was held in the premises of the hotel “Novi Sad“ on 5^th December 2019. It was also an introductory session where it was discussed about the forthcoming conference schedule. There were more than 20 members of Program Committee who come from different educational and scientific institutions from the country and the region, such as The Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering, University in Belgrade, Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, University in Zagreb, Coventry University from Great Britain, Faculty of Traffic and Communications of University in Sarajevo, Technical Faculty of University “St. Kliment Ohridski“ from Bitola, etc.

The official conference program started with the ceremonial opening when the present were addressed and greeted by:

• Nenad Grbić, Provincial Secretary for Energy, Construction and Transport of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina
• Đorđe Basarić, Head of City Administration for Traffic and Roads of the City of Novi Sad
• Prof. Dr Vuk Bogdanović, President of Conference Program Committee
• Dr Srđan Škunca, Coordinator of Network CiViNET Slovenia-Croatia-SE Europe.

After the opening, the program was continued with two invited lectures. The first lecture, “The Green City Action Plan – Methodology”, was given by MSc Dušan Savković (Mott MacDonald, Belgrade, Serbia). The city of Belgrade wanted to take a systematic approach to solving its urban challenges. The action plan for green city represents a part in Green Cities of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Framework. The objective of the Green Cities Framework is to guide Cities through four main steps – from establishing a 1) Green City Baseline, developing a 2) Green City Action Plan, all the way through to 3) implementation and 4) reporting on progress and outcomes.

The second invited lecture was given by Prof. Dr Vuk Bogdanović (University in Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences) titled “SMART plan of Novi Sad“. During 2017 the city of Novi Sad started the processes related to the realization of the project Smart City. Within the first phase of the project, numerous research studies have been conducted where a lot of data were collected on mobility, public transport system, traffic conditions, parking and traffic safety. Based on the project first phase results, the travel model on the territory of the city of Novi Sad was formed, which was used for testing all planned infrastructure interventions and activities in the street network. After the analyses, the action plan was proposed for conducting all the activities related to the implementation of the plans and measures in all the areas which would contribute to the advancement of Novi Sad traffic system in the spirit of sustainable mobility and smart city. 

The conclusion of the invited lectures was that strategically planning documents from the field of urban traffic are necessary for taking actions which contribute to sustainable urban mobility and development of cities.

A significant contribution and advancement in organizing conference this year is reflected in the fact that participants had an opportunity to attend the round-table discussion about sustainable urban mobility plans – SUMP. The participants of the round-table discussion were leading experts from the country and the region who are engaged in the creation of plans of sustainable urban mobility and they shared they previous experience in the creation and implementation of these plans, as well as the guidelines for further development in this field. The round-table discussion was conducted by Prof. Dr Vladimir Đorić, and also Prof. Dr Valentina Mirović, Prof. Dr Luka Novačko, Prof. Dr Vladimir Depolo, Dr Srđan Škunca and Jelena Nikolić took part in it, and more than ten other conference participants joined the discussion.

The conclusions of the round-table discussion are that SUMP document is recognizable within EU and is necessary for the creation of different projects from the field of sustainable urban mobility. Regardless of the fact whether SUMP was defined within legislation in the field of planning, local communities can create their SUMP independently or through different projects. Different subject have to be involved in the creation of SUMP, not only city administration and academic community, but NGO as well, different civic associations and interested individuals, so as to reach consensus and enable the implementation of the proposed measures.

About fifty scientific and expert articles were presented in four different themes at the conference for these two days: 

• Urban mobility policy
• New mobility services, technologies and tools
• Public transport organization
• Traffic safety.

On the first day of the conference, articles from the field of “Urban mobility policy” were presented.

Most of the articles presented at the conference were from the field of “New mobility services, technologies and tools”, therefore, the thematic field was divided into two sections of presentations, both held on the first day of the conference.

Conclusions of the presented articles are that planning documentation related to the field of sustainable mobility is to be created in accordance with the latest recommendations, which especially insist on the plan of activities for the implementation and monitoring the effects of the proposed measures. When analysing the effects of the proposed measures, it is useful to apply application software packages and other tools so as to define the priorities and conduct the evaluation of the implemented measures effects. Contemporary approach in solving the problem of urban mobility is inconceivable without the application of different technologies and services which are based on the use of IT technologies.

Within the conference the participants had the opportunity to attend different expert workshops where the use of contemporary program packages was presented. These packages can be used for creating traffic simulations in cities at different levels: micro, macro and meso.

The second day of the conference started with the workshop “Macrosimulation Models“, held by Dr Tamara Đukić (AIMSUN, Barcelona, Spain) and Mr Aleksandar Jevđenić (Public company “Urbanism”, Novi Sad, Serbia).

After that, the second expert workshop was held, with the topic “Microsimulation Models“, by Žarko Anđić (Traffimax, Perth, Australia) and Aleksandar Panjković (Public company “Urbanism”, Novi Sad, Serbia).

The conclusions of the workshops are that the use of contemporary application software packages is necessary for testing different variants and measures in the creation of plans, studies and projects related to urban mobility at macro, meso and micro level. When creating meso and micro simulations, local specific characteristics have to be considered through the values of parameters for describing traffic flow and street network characteristics.

On the second day there were also two invited lectures. The first lecture with the theme “Steps along the Way to Sustainable, Inclusive and Accessible Transport” was held by Prof. Dr Andree Woodcock (Coventry University, Coventry, Great Britain). In her invited lecture, Prof. Woodcock discussed the approaches which she used so as to support gender aspect and difference in the field of sustainable transport. She presented the results of three projects (H2020 CIVITAS SUITS, H2020 TInnGO and RCUK). She concluded that all the advantages gained from the sustainable and smart mobility are hardly achievable without the support and changes within local authorities and carriers. What was especially emphasized was the need for women and children safety, which are in some environments, especially during the use of public transport, exposed to different forms of violence, which affects mobility, but the level of use of public transport as well.

The last invited lecture was held by Mr Gradimir Stefanović (GSTC Ltd, London, Great Britain), and the presentation theme was “Tram – train technology: review and developing possibilities“. Mr Stefanović stated the key principles of the tram-train concept, as well as the current state, in the field related to the existing systems, but also the systems which are in the phase of planning and construction.  In his paper he stated the criteria for technical and economic justification of these systems introduction, and at the end he gave the possible applications of these innovative systems in Serbia and the region. The conclusion is that the process of unification of these two transport systems is long-term and in average it lasts for 9-10 years, mostly due to the resistance in state railway companies. Regardless of the difficulties that are encountered in technological and organizational sense, these technological systems are possible and due to the reduction in changeover number they represent a very significant instrument for the decrease in private passenger cars use.

Simultaneously with the workshops, authors presented their papers in the field of “Public transport organization” and “Traffic safety”.

The conclusions are that public transport has a special role and significance for achieving the goals of sustainable urban mobility, considering that it offers the majority of passengers an alternative for passenger cars. With the application of restrictive policy in the field of parking, public transport developing is the basic instrument for the reduction of passenger cars usage. In order to achieve these goals, it is necessary to apply different measures in the field of tariff policy, passengers informing, availability, comfort and multimodality, which encourage the use of public transport in all social categories of the population.

As far as traffic safety is concerned, the conclusions are that lately there has been a trend of decrease of traffic accidents number at road sections outside towns and increase of the number of traffic accidents in the urban environment, which is a direct consequence of a higher use of passenger cars and exposure of the traffic participants. In order to increase traffic safety, in the urban environment it is necessary to apply different measures in the street network, but also through the increase of population consciousness of possible consequences of traffic accidents.

At the end of the official conference program, there was the session of official conference closing, where the present conferees were addressed by Prof. Dr Vuk Bogdanović, the president of the conference program committee.

The following conference was announced for October 2021 in Novi Sad.

One of international institutions which supported the conference was CIVITAS City Networks CiViNET Slovenia-Croatia-Southeast Europe. This organization represents a network of cities which are engaged in sustainable planning and mobility management on the territory of Slovenia and Croatia, then Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, the Republic of North Macedonia, and Serbia, and Novi Sad is also a member of the network. The members of the network used the conference gathering for holding the meeting of the network executive committee. Their meeting was held on 5^th December 2019 in the conference room of the hotel “Novi Sad”. Namely, apart from the basic themes related to the network, reporting on the work and the proposal of forthcoming activities, in keeping with the conference topic, discussed the topic of mobility in the sustainable environment. Since the aim of the network is knowledge and good practice sharing, then designing joint projects which will be used for funding future activities of sustainable traffic and better mobility, meeting other conference participants was seen as an ideal opportunity for the promotion of their work and establishing contacts with possible future partners within European projects planned for the following period.

Apart from the official conference program, the participants of this year’s conference had the opportunity to get to know each other better at meeting and business gatherings during the conference, also to make new contacts and agreements on possible future cooperation on joint projects whose aim would be the improvement of traffic conditions in cities.

In keeping with the theme of this year’s conference “Environmentally Friendly Mobility”, the general conclusion of the conferees is that all further activities have to be directed to sustainable mobility, as it is a prerequisite of economic prosperity, social equality and quality of life in urban environments. The conference organizers hope that all the contents presented at the conference will enable academic community and institutions when making decisions and governing cities and/or municipalities to get better acquainted with the methods and possibilities of creating strategies and finding solutions which are based on the concept “fewer cars– higher mobility”, thus they will enable the application of  sustainable mobility and make cities and towns more environmentally acceptable, available and high-quality for living.