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Transit agencies worldwide trust Treelight for comprehensive HASTUS support, from installation and security to integration and performance optimization.

With over 17 years of HASTUS expertise, we align the platform with your operations to deliver real efficiency gains.

Now expanding in North America with our Montreal office, we provide expert service in your timezone.

Let us handle the technical complexity while you focus on what matters: passengers, scheduling and daily operations.

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Road Safety

Are We Measuring What Really Matters for Road Safety?

The European Commission has set an overarching ambition of reaching Vision Zero by 2050, meaning no deaths or serious injuries on the road network.

Trendline brings together 29 European countries to collect and analyse data, deliver road safety KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and use these KPIs within road safety policies.

A report has been published on the progress against the KPIs. (Note: these are a level down from the top-line death and serious injury KPIs.)

Key Takeaways

• KP1 - Speed
  • Definition: percentage of vehicles travelling within the speed limit, alongside average speed, and speed below 85% of drivers are driving.
  • Results: Although the overall trend suggests modest improvements, non-compliance remains widespread, especially on urban roads.
• KPI2 - Safety belts and child restraint systems
  • Definition: percentage of vehicle occupants using the safety belt or child restraint system (correctly).
  • Results: Seatbelt use is the norm for front-seat riders. Rear-seat passengers are still often unprotected, and misuse of child restraint systems continues to compromise safety.
• KPI3 - Protective equipment (helmets)
  • Definition: the percentage of riders of powered two-wheelers (PTW) (motorcycles and mopeds) and bicycles wearing a protective helmet.
  • Results: Helmet wearing among PTW riders has essentially achieved (almost) full compliance. Cyclist helmet use remains much lower, often alarmingly low, with cultural and behavioural resistance proving difficult to overcome.
• KPI4 - Driving under the influence of alcohol
  • Definition: percentage of car drivers within the legal limit for blood alcohol content (BAC).
  • Results: The alcohol KPI shows a high compliance with legal BAC limits, exceeding 98% in most countries.
• KPI5 - Distraction
  • Definition: percentage of drivers not using a handheld mobile device while driving.
  • Results: Generally a high proportion of drivers - typically more than 90% - not using handheld devices while driving. Drivers of light and heavy goods vehicles are significantly more likely to use mobile devices than drivers of passenger cars.
• KPI6 - Vehicle safety
  • Definition: percentage of new passenger cars with a Euro NCAP safety rating equal to or above a predefined threshold (four/five stars).
  • Results: The share of models with at least four stars is 80% or higher in most countries.
• KPI7 - Post-crash care
  • Definition: time elapsed between the emergency call following a road crash resulting in personal injury and the arrival at the scene of the road crash of the emergency services.
  • Results: Median response times (P50) are around 11 minutes, suggesting a quick response time in about half of the cases.
• KPI8 - Infrastructure
  • This KPI is still being developed, so no results are available.
• One component of the Trendline project was to extend the scope of KPIs by developing new experimental indicators in areas not yet systematically covered. These include:

Comment

Unfortunately, two of the most important KPIs have big weaknesses:

• The vehicle safety NCAP ratings do not adequately account for the risks that larger vehicles (think SUVs) pose to the most vulnerable road users.
• Driver speed is significantly influenced by infrastructure; improving it could make a significant difference to the speed KPI.

Additionally, there are no current or in-development KPIs tracking an alternative approach to road safety, namely mode shift (see here).

What Next?

Are you tracking the most important KPIs and targeting your road safety interventions around them?

Business Cases

Traffic Congestion: Expensive Problem or Inflated Numbers?

The cost of congestion is integral to assessing the business case for transport investments, especially new and bigger roads. But how good are our estimates of the cost of congestion? This report from Todd Litman at the Victoria Transport Policy Institute examines North America.

Key Takeaways

• Planners previously treated traffic as a fluid that flows through a road system, but we now know it behaves more like a gas that fills available road space.
• If capacity increases, traffic grows until congestion returns with more total traffic.
• Industry-sponsored studies produce high estimates of traffic congestion costs.
• A major portion of estimated congestion costs is actually traffic speed compliance: drivers slowing to legal and safe speeds.
• Many travel time values used for estimating congestion costs are too high.
• Congestion costs per motorist rather than per capita ignore how exposure affects congestion costs. If many residents use alternative modes, per capita congestion costs are lower.
• Most, if not all, reported growth in Travel Time Index ratings, delay hours and congestion costs results from faster free-flow speeds rather than slower peak-period speeds.
• The bottom line is that the estimates of congestion cost are between 40 and 70% too high.
• Productivity tends to increase with urban traffic congestion. More compact development and multimodal planning tend to increase prosperity more than faster driving.
• Traffic congestion is just one of many factors that affect overall accessibility and is generally not the most important; financial costs, travel distance and the lack of non-auto modes often constrain people’s ability to reach services and activities.​

Comment

One of the major challenges we face in moving to people-oriented transport systems is the road-building industry, in both the private and public sectors, who like to exaggerate the benefits of roads and the costs of congestion.

We need to ensure that our business cases include high-quality estimates of congestion and account for induced demand.

What Next?

How good are your congestion cost estimates?

Strategic Planning

Can Co-Production Break Down Planning Silos? Lessons from the PUMA Network

The PUMA (Plans for Urban Mobility Actions) network was established to support regions in creating integrated action plans (IAPs) in Europe. It focused on supporting nine cities and regions in developing Integrated Action Plans that translate strategic ambitions into coherent, implementable frameworks for change in urban mobility. They have recently published a final report reflecting on what they have learned.

Key Takeaways

• The cities and regions participating in the PUMA network entered the action planning process from markedly different starting points.
• Car dependency remained a dominant feature in most partner cities, often reinforced by land-use patterns, dispersed development and limited alternatives.
• Even where sustainable mobility objectives were formally recognised, they were frequently addressed through isolated measures rather than integrated approaches.
• Integrated mobility requires strong governance and coordination across departments and policy areas.
• Walking and public space are foundational elements of liveable and inclusive mobility systems.
• Parking management remains a critical and politically sensitive area of intervention.
• Implementation capacity is as important as strategic ambition.
• Co-production strengthens ownership and improves the quality of planning outcomes.
• Learning by doing supports better decision-making.
• Context matters – solutions must be adapted, not transferred.
• Beyond individual plans and actions, the legacy of PUMA lies in strengthened capacities, shared understanding and more integrated ways of working.

Comment

A major weakness of transport strategy and planning in many places is the difficulty of integrating with other policy areas, especially land use. Therefore, PUMA's approach to integrating with other disciplines is a step in the right direction.

Having worked on efforts to integrate transport, land use and infrastructure planning, I will be interested to see if the PUMA approach leads to integrated implementation as well. Hopefully, future research will examine that.

What Next?

Would a co-production process help you break down silos across disciplines and create better integrated plans?

Quick Adventures in Transport Wonderland

Here is what else I came across this week:

• ​Is fare free transit just? Quantifying the impact of moral principles on transit design and finance​
• ​Are Autonomous Vehicles Safer Than Human Drivers? We Don't Know Yet​
• ​Better public transport depends on bigger office buildings​

Podcast

AI in Transport

This week on the Transport Leaders podcast, we discussed the use of AI in transport, including:

🚦 How machine learning has been quietly powering traffic signals for decades

📊 Why data quality matters more than the AI itself

🚌 The hidden challenges in using AI for bus network redesign

⚠️ When AI hallucinations could lead transport planning astray

👥 Why humans must stay in the loop for critical decisions

You can watch it here or listen here.

Tool

How to Visualise "Better Streets" Using AI

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The Better Streets campaign in Australia has developed instructions to make it easier to create a visualisation of how a street could look different and show a space's potential using AI.