Shaping the future of sustainable urban mobility across Europe with SPINE

How can European cities accelerate their journey toward climate-neutral mobility?

The EU-funded SPINE Project is tackling this challenge by supporting 11 cities in testing
real-life solutions that integrate public transport with shared mobility, micromobility, and active modes.

Yunex Traffic plays a key role as a technical partner, providing data-driven tools and algorithms that help cities assess public transport quality and visualize traffic signal coordination. By turning complex mobility data into actionable insights, we help cities move from ambition to implementation – shaping the future of sustainable urban transport across Europe.

A European collaboration for real-world impact

SPINE (Smart Public transport Initiatives for climate-Neutral cities in Europe) brings together 11 cities, including Antwerp, Bologna, Las Palmas, and Tallinn – to test and evaluate real-life solutions that integrate public transport with shared mobility, micromobility, and active modes like walking and cycling.

The goal: reduce emissions, improve accessibility, and support the decarbonization of urban transport.

The project is structured around Living Labs: selected urban areas where innovations are tested under real conditions. These include both Lead Cities, which drive implementation, and Twinning Cities, which replicate and adapt the solutions to their local context.

Turning mobility data into actionable insights

As a technical partner we support cities with tools and algorithms that help assess the quality of public transport.

Our work focuses on two key areas:

• Travel time analysis
  We use historical data from detectors, telegrams, GTFS feeds, or GPS-based sources to calculate travel times along critical public transport corridors. This helps cities evaluate service consistency and identify bottlenecks that impact reliability.

• Green wave visualizations
  By integrating traffic signal data, we visualize how well public transport aligns with green phases at intersections. This enables cities to assess transit efficiency and uncover opportunities for smoother, more coordinated movement through urban corridors.

From data collection to platform integration

The project is currently in the implementation phase. Cities have collected and harmonized historical data in line with Yunex Traffic’s technical requirements. In many cases, this meant developing alternative methods such as using GTFS feeds or equipping buses with GPS trackers to reconstruct vehicle trajectories.

Collaboration with simulation partners like Aimsun has further enriched the dataset. The result is a robust, standardized data model that feeds into our algorithms for public transport quality assessment.

Supporting diverse cities with scalable solutions

We are currently working with three Lead Cities: Las Palmas, Bologna, and Antwerp and several Twinning Cities including Gdynia, Zilina, and Valladolid.

Each city brings its own infrastructure, challenges, and data landscape. Through continuous dialogue and adaptive collaboration, we’ve helped cities identify suitable monitoring methods, build local capacity, and contribute meaningful data despite varying levels of technological maturity.

Looking ahead: A framework for the future

By the end of the project, we aim to deliver a standardized, scalable framework for assessing and improving public transport quality across Europe.

This includes:

• Actionable insights tailored to each city
• A replicable model for data-driven mobility planning
• Strengthened collaboration between cities and operators

“It’s been exciting to see how cities overcame local constraints to contribute meaningful data. With ongoing dialogue and a flexible approach, we made sure local circumstances were reflected in the process. That’s what makes the SPINE Project so impactful.”

— Nadine Hrabia, Project Technical Expert at Yunex Traffic and project manager with a focus on data analytics for SPINE

SPINE is more than a research project

it’s a blueprint for how cities can use data to shape the future of sustainable urban mobility and we are proud to be part of that transformation!

Discover more research in action

SPINE is just one example of how we support cities in moving from vision to implementation. Across Europe and beyond, Yunex Traffic drives innovation – with research projects that turn complex mobility challenges into practical solutions.

Curious how else we are shaping the future of sustainable mobility? Explore our other research initiatives and learn about the impact they are already making.