What I Learned On My Trip to Seville

Recently, I was asked to travel to Seville Spain to attend ITS European Congress 2025 (I know…there are worse places to be sent for work and as a travel enthusiast, I love being able to check another city in the world off my travel list!). This was the first international conference I attended for Rekor, and it was fascinating to see the different companies, technologies, and topics discussed. I always believe conference plenary sessions tell you a lot about what the organizers feel are the most important or hottest topics of the moment for attendees and so I thought I would share a few of my learnings from the daily plenary sessions.

Plenary Session 1: The Green Shift – Accelerating a Sustainable Future

Europe is certainly a leader in green initiatives. This includes not only adopting EV public and private transit options but ensuring that the transportation network is conducive to all forms of travel and that citizens can easily make the most sustainable choice. Hamburg gave an example of how counting vehicles and bikes helped to drive data-driven decision making that identified hotspots for bike challenges and informed policy updates. They also shared an example of the hvv switch, a multimodal app they created for citizens to book various mobility services including car sharing, e-scooter, e-shuttles, and public transportation all in one app. Google discussed how they nudge user behavior towards green options with their suggestions feature or even just by presenting all the options. I experienced this myself in Seville (a city made up of very beautiful, but also very twisty and narrow streets). Often when I would map out a route, Google Maps would show me the walk was 10 minutes, while the car was at least 20 minutes. This made my choice to walk not only the greener (and healthier) choice but the obvious, easy choice.

What I found particularly interesting during this discussion is that while the US and EU may be at different points with some green initiatives, there is a universal truth that never goes away – Data. And the fact that everyone's connectivity to data is foundational in supporting all our important initiatives. As one panelist put it, green itself is not the goal - connectivity is. When we are all connected, helping citizens make the greener choice becomes easy instead of forced.

Plenary Session 2: Resilient by Design – Shaping a Competitive Mobility Value Chain

This conversation was fascinating. We certainly talk about resiliency at US centric conferences, but there were two elements of this conversation that I had not heard discussed before. The first was the "invisible utility" – the satellite system. Conceptually, we all know that intelligent systems rely heavily on this invisible system to share locations and synchronize information instantly and in real-time. These navigation systems must be highly accurate and always available, to build confidence in our reliance on the data. Resiliency is often predicated on redundancy and satellites are pretty hard to duplicate. That makes their cybersecurity and other resilient design features all the more important.

The second discussion I found personally interesting was the concept of Mobility as a Feature (MaaF) (versus Mobility as a Service). Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is generally thought of as the concept where different transportation options, both public and private, are integrated into a single platform or application, supporting a more unified journey experience for the user (like the hvv switch example from Hamburg in the previous day's session). It can, however, be considered a silo, because it is still only focused on the transportation space. MaaF shifts to focusing on how we create seamless service and bring societal needs back to transportation operations. In essence, MaaS is focused on the transportation user experience while MaaF is focused on societal/human value (focusing on what the end user really wants versus just their transportation wants).

Plenary Session 3: Towards Leadership in CCAM and Automated Driving Technologies

The final plenary session felt like it would be a familiar topic – every conference in transportation spends at least some time on automated vehicles. But this session felt less like a session on AVs and more a session that pulled together the two key themes from the previous sessions – connectivity and the end user. Achieving CCAM (which in Europe stands for Cooperative, Connected, and Automated Mobility) is about mobility not just for the car but for all people. As one panelist puts it, leading in CCAM demands connectivity, because without that you cannot hope to achieve safer, sustainable, efficient traffic for all people.

But the importance of connectivity is still, at its heart, about technology. The other key to leading in CCAM is remembering that the end user, the driver, is at the heart. Technology only works if the human, the driver in this case, trusts it and uses it. The panel talked a lot about the importance of finding the balance between the speed of technological innovation and the speed of user adoption and the importance of moving these two things together to truly lead in this space. They also discussed the importance of translating technology into common language and training/re-training people on its value. Only with connectivity and cooperation between all involved, including the driver, can we lead towards a safe, sustainable, and efficient traffic experience for all people.

Conclusion

Transportation is global – both its benefits and challenges - but how we address and prioritize those challenges are based on our unique citizen's needs, which are of course, influenced by our individual societies. How we may talk about it is certainly different, but the idea of connectivity and keeping humans at the heart are universal truths in transportation.

On a side note, I was also lucky enough to have a little bit of free time to check out Seville's historic center (Casco Antiguo) and Barrio Santa Cruz (sharing a few of the amazing pictures for you to see for yourself). It was absolutely gorgeous and someday I will return to Spain on my own so that I can enjoy more of it (and maybe enjoy an even more connected transportation experience).