Over 4 days in April this year, for the first time ever in Ireland, the European Commission’s Flagship Research and Innovation event for Mobility, the Transport Research Arena (TRA) took place at the RDS in Dublin. The TRA is a pivotal event on the European Transport calendar and convenes every two years, rotating through various European cities with its main aim to foster collaboration in research and innovation across Europe in the transportation and mobility sectors.
The TRA Dublin 2024 event themed “Transport Transitions: Advancing Sustainable and Inclusive Mobility” “was a huge success with more than 4500 attendees representing over 57 countries, and included 1100 presentations across 51 strategic and special sessions, 103 oral sessions, 24 poster sessions and more than 100 individual exhibition stands.
The event saw a number of high-profile speakers including Eamonn Ryan, Minister for Transport and Jack Chambers, Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Magda Kopczyńska, Director-General, DG Transport and Mobility (MOVE) and Signe Ratso, Deputy Director-General, DG Research and Innovation (RTD) at the European Commission.
TRA Dublin 2024 also saw the presence of many global and European industrial companies as well as a significant presence of Irish industry across multiple transport modes and sectors, which provided a unique opportunity for Irish-based companies and research centers to not only showcase their innovations and capabilities, but also to engage with policymakers and industry peers.
Exhibitors at the event included the European Commission, CINEA, the European Joint Research Centres (JRC), the transport Joint Undertakings (JU) such as Clean Aviation, the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) JU, Europe’s Rail and the Hydrogen JU as well as transport-related technology platforms such as ERTRAC (European Road Transport Advisory Council) and ALICE (Logistics) but also the co-programmed partnerships such as 2ZERO, CCAM, ZEWT and the European Batteries Partnership ( BATT4EU).
The Irish Pavilion saw the presence of many of the transport-related state agencies including the National Transport Authority (NTA), Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), Irish Maritime Development Office and the Road Safety Authority (RSA) as well as Air Nav Ireland, Irish Rail and Dublin Bus. The Irish industry pavilion, a collaboration between Enterprise Ireland, Future Mobility Campus Ireland (FMCI) and the IDA was a great success with both SMEs and Irish-based multinationals exhibiting. Irish Universities were represented at TRA through the Irish Transport Research Network. Austria, the UK and Germany also had a large presence at the event through their national pavilions.
TRA Dublin 2024's Innovation Zone, in conjunction with the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA), presented a range of ongoing and recently completed Horizon Europe projects. A Horizon Europe Brokerage event, managed by the NCP project GREENET and the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), also took place with 20 pitches from potential proposal coordinators for the upcoming calls in 2024.
The next TRA in 2026 will be hosted by Budapest.