Galileo adoption is gearing up in European Public Transport schemes

Galileo is transforming urban mobility with advanced location capabilities, enhancing public transport systems across Europe to become more sustainable and smarter.

As Europe strives for smarter, safer, and more sustainable urban environments, the adoption of space technologies is becoming increasingly essential.

EUSPA, in line with its mission, is actively supporting the uptake of EUSpace data and services by interacting with the entire public transport value chain, including local public transport authorities, technological service providers or associations such as UITP or Ertico - ITS Europe. Among the many advantages offered by EUspace to the public transportation industry, in the course of 2024, Galileo demonstrated once more its usefulness in enhancing the precision and the reliability of Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) solutions. In the course of 2024, indeed, cities like Barcelona and London or even country-wide transport authorities like NTA in Ireland have chosen to include Galileo in their implemented or soon to be implemented AVL systems, in view of its advanced location capabilities at no cost.

Barcelona bus journeys already benefit from Galileo

The Spanish company GMV, through its subsidiary dedicated to Intelligent Transportation Systems, is leading a project aiming at modernising a good part of the city's public transportation fleet with technology that includes Galileo usage. Specifically, the Barcelona Metropolitan Transport Authority has installed technology from the Spanish company in its multi-fleet and multi-operator Operation and Information Assistance System in 916 buses operated by 27 operators.

Ireland: a nation-wide vehicle location unified solutions under one platform

In Ireland, several Public Service Obligation (PSO) bus routes are operated by different transport providers. The new system being provided by Trapeze ITS unifies all previous AVL systems under one platform, thus delivering a consistent bus service management solution across all bus operators and providing high-quality dynamic real-time information to citizens, through on-street displays, the Transport for Ireland (TFL Live) application and other third-party smartphone applications.

The new AVL system will bring about operational savings, while also offering passengers more accurate and reliable real-time information. More than 2,300 buses will make use of Galileo and the migration to the new system will start in 2025.

TfL is embracing Galileo while upgrading its localization technology

In the spring of 2024, INIT Innovations in Transportation Ltd. has been awarded a contract for the delivery of a new technology system for London's buses, providing on-board, back office and support services for Transport for London (TfL). This solution will be used by TfL to help manage operations on more than 8,000 buses running around 700 bus routes and serving over 19,000 bus stops across Greater London, potentially bringing Galileo benefits to a massive number of citizens because more than 140 million journeys are being operated by TfL bus network every month (source TfL).

The Julia Project: Mapping Galileo Success in Urban Mobility

Those and several other success stories regarding Galileo adoption are being collected and showcased by the EU-funded Julia project. Short for Joint Developments for Urban resiLIence connecting users to public transport through spAce technology, this Horizon-funded project seeks to integrate EU Space services and data, primarily the Galileo ones, into the global public transport sector. Specifically, a "Global Observatory of EU Space Data & Services in Public Transport" has already been created in the first year of the project, also featuring a periodically updated map graphically showing the status of the adoption of Galileo in European Public Transport systems. Julia project team actively invites authorities, operators and providers operating in the public transport industry to get in contact with them to showcase how the integration of Galileo provided benefits to their customers and operations.

Galileo is paving the way to a Forward-Thinking Approach to Urban Mobility

As European cities continue to embrace innovative technologies, the future of urban transport looks brighter, driven by enhanced connectivity, efficiency, and responsiveness to citizens' needs. While waiting for public Transport stakeholders to fully benefit from Galileo differentiators such as HAS and the upcoming OSNMA by providing value-added services specifically designed for them, the journey toward smarter forms of urban mobility is well underway, with Galileo leading the way.

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