In this interview from Next American City, Anette Scheibe, CEO, at Electrum Foundation and Kista Science City talks about the role of mobility in the city's development.
"Over time, Stockholm has been able to meet growth challenges by exploiting new land areas and through densification while successfully developing the transportation system to cope with growing needs. However, a few years ago we had critical levels of cars travelling into the downtown area on the main routes as the new ITS industry developed.
Since Stockholm is known as a city with extremely high internet penetration where everyone had early access to cell phones, and since it has a very large internationally recognized IT industry that is intensively engaged in research, it was natural to direct interest to this area. The city street department, Swedish Road Administration, and Stockholm Public Transport began collaborating in 2000 on a common vision for traffic solutions using IT and telecom, and by mid-decade a common portal for traffic information was available: www.trafiken.nu.
Kista Science City is a common city, business, research, and academic communication platform whose mission is to create forums for regional players. As an ICT cluster with more than 1,000 companies and strong growth, we believe that a new ITS focus area can contribute greatly to developing Stockholm's transportation system while generating new innovations and promoting new export solutions."
