Electrification of Public Transport in Europe: Vision and Practice from the ELIPTIC Project

Although electric passenger cars tend to capture the lion's share in visioning and designing cleaner mobility patterns, research continuously provides directions to support cleaner public transport systems and in recent times electrification has become more and more a core field of study. An example is ELIPTIC (2015-2018), a project funded by the European Commission, with the aim to develop new concepts to optimise existing electric public transport infrastructure and rolling stock on eleven use cases across Europe. The goal is to demonstrate that electric vehicles are cost-efficient and beneficial to the urban environment. The ELIPTIC outcomes are assessed according to a specific methodology and via a User Forum involving public transport stakeholders. The paper therefore describes the ELIPTIC concepts under test and the adopted methodology, along with the outcomes from the assessment procedure. Recommendations for upscaling electrification of public transit fleet across Europe are drawn, to provide advanced knowledge for further applications beyond this project.