Trikala: Buses without Drivers

The city of Trikala, northwestern Thessaly, Greece, was selected along with five European cities for the implementation of the European pilot project for automated road transport systems, CityMobil2. Automated transport systems are made up of vehicles operating without a driver in collective mode. The project CityMobil2 officially started on September 1, 2009 and will last 4 years. It has 45 partners drawn from system suppliers, city authorities, the research community and networking organizations. The Greek city of Trikala and the other five European cities elected will carry out six-month tests with automated vehicles. Due to the difficulty of the project the Development Company of Trikala Municipality, e-Trikala will collaborate with the Institute of Communications and Computers Systems of the National Technical University. According to CityMobil2 official website, Trikala was the first digital city in Greece.  The city’s IT activity started in 2002, when the idea for searching technological ways of servicing the citizens was born. In 2003, the municipality of Trikala recruited employees in order to form the Development Company e-Trikala, which took action on new broadband technologies over the next 5 years. This led to the nomination of Trikala as one of the 21 most intelligent cities in the world by the Intelligent Community Forum for three consecutive years (2009, 2010, 2011).

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