“Live as if you were the key to solving the transportation issues. Because in a way, we all are.” Lucía Moreno González-Páramo, UK / Spain, Civil and Structural engineer, Team Compal

Another season shifts and settles. Here in Stockholm, the summer sun is drawing what has been sown into full growth and bloom. In the centre of the city, a trolley is pushed from one raised herb garden to another, watering the tidy boxes of aromatic green in the intense light and heat. Between the conference centre and the railway station, groundspeople are carefully tending and replanting perfect flowerbeds. And here, among patches of shade from steady trees, tiny midges are happily feeding on participants of the 3rd Global Y4PT Hackathon as they exercise and meditate in the warm air.

In the framework of the 63rd UITP Global Public Transport Summit Stockholm 2019 – the world’s oldest, largest and top leading sustainable transport event – the winners of local and global Y4PT Hackathons have gathered for the finale of a third year. These young researchers, students and professionals bring together expertise and knowledge from over 40 events worldwide.

In a soft curtained room in Stockholmsmässan, a record-breaking 45 initial ideas were pitched by the young participants. Addressing healthy and sustainable mobility, and universal accessibility through local experience and global scalability, some of these ideas were brand new, while others built directly on previous successes.

“The final in Stockholm is like a dream – to work with people with the same objective. I already feel like a winner because the technology we made is now used by the government of Colombia to save lives and improve mobility.” Walter Gavez, Columbia, Engineer, Team Evital

From these 45 ideas, 12 were voted by the group for development and teams were formed around them.

During the 3 days of the hack, these diverse collaborative teams, with members hailing from over 30 countries, developed each idea into a prototype and pitch, which was tested and refined throughout with international industry mentors.

“I believe that working in interdisciplinary groups, where everyone can share different ideas and visions of things, added to the cultural value of our perspectives allowed us to achieve much more interesting projects.” Alejandro Sanchez Gutirrrez, Mexico, Biomedical Engineer, Team Check

These projects were presented to a panel of international judges representing the 5 Y4PT Ring Cities –  Dubai, Manchester, Menden, Milan and Moscow – UITP and Y4PT.

“I would tell those living in the future to work across geographic, gender and racial barriers to overcome their future challenges. I will tell those living in the world today that our challenges are only surmountable through collaboration and idea sharing.” Disun Vera-Cruz, Nigeria, Remote Operations, Team Clearway

During the opening ceremony of the UITP Global Public Transport Summit Stockholm 2019, the winners of the 3rd Global Y4PT Hackathon Finale were announced and prizes presented:

The winners, and all our hackathon pioneers then joined the congress, welcoming visitors and dignitaries to the room where these ideas were created, and taking to the show floor.  

The theme of the summit is “The Art of Public Transport”, and throughout we experience transport professionals wrestling with what it is to be an artist, what it is to truly create. Aesthetic inspiration quickly travels to the immediacy and power of making things happen. To the awareness of detail, and to lasting human impact.

This is the core of Y4PT Hackathon.

As we return to a breath in the green space, we are as aware of the midges as we are of the trees. I am reminded of a saying I read on a whiteboard at Tower Hill Tube station, London: “If you think you are too small to make a difference, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito”. I look it up – it is an African proverb. Told, but not credited, like so much of our shared knowledge.

Look again at the names and faces here – follow them as they recur. They are creating the future of our mobility, of the ways we navigate our world. Now they are hackers, here to challenge and create. Here to buzz in your ear and make you notice what you previously had not. Tomorrow they will be beside you, and you will follow where they lead. Don’t wait, invite this now.

“Humanity and community will always remain. Working together as one knowing that together you get farther. Don’t forget that you are not the only one.” Alejandra Ortiz Rengel, Ecuador. Designer Team Check

It is not perfection and completion that keeps us going, but other lives and ways of being – and these may not sit comfortably with what we currently choose to recognise as our own. A tiny itch of a bite in the summer sun spurs me to move, and I realise I had sat too long on one position. My body is glad of the change.

Being part of something greater than ourselves is not always easy, smooth or convenient, but it is in these times that we learn truly what our actions are capable of transforming.

– Laura Trevail; Stockholm & Southend On Sea, June 2019

“The world is a small world for passionate people” – Eloi Stree, VR Developer, and Y4PT Hackathon Winner & Mentor

 

 

In a little under a week, Y4PT participants and mentors will be travelling from all over the globe to Stockholm, to take part in the 2019 Y4PT Global Hackathon Finale. Our adventurers will bring and share their winning ideas from the past 2 years, and, in the framework of the UITP Public Transport Summit, create and present new solutions to our planet’s most pressing problems.

 

To those outside the field, transport may seem an unlikely leader and champion in the fight for the future of our world. On our journeys we see huge vehicles, grey roads, and shimmering fumes. We get lost in stations, miss connections, wade through grinding and wasteful delays. When we travel, when we move, all around us are reminders of the dangers we face now and may yet leave as our legacy to those walking the Earth after us.

 

The truth is, though, none of us are really outside this field. Transport is not a sector that can ever hide away. However we choose to use or build it, however we participate, however it carries us; we all have to find a way to get from one place to another. From the moment we wriggle in our parents arms and reach out towards something we want on the other side of the room, we are working out how to get around, and what we can make use of to help us get there! We humans are ambitious beyond the limits of our own bodies; ambitious beyond the limits of our current abilities; ambitious beyond the limits of our resources. This ambition gives us the power to achieve great things for ourselves, for our communities, and for our world. And also the power to deplete, to pollute, to waste, and to destroy. Nowhere is this battle for balance more tangible than in the ways we travel. For the entirety of human existence, transport has been right at the point where idealism and messy reality meet. So this is where we choose to stand, to create, and to make a difference.  

 

“I have learned to never give up, and find [a] solution for every situation I encounter” – Sabin Dimian, Landscape Engineer, Product Designer, Y4PTHackathon Participant and Winner

 

Our Y4PT community – participants, mentors and supporters alike – are determined, proactive and visionary. We know in our hearts, and can conjure in our minds a future where sustainability, humanity, equality and health are fundamental to practical innovation rather than words thrown into a wishing well for funding. We have the guts to be building this world right now, with our own hands. We can see and create the destination. Our challenge is to you; Can you get here? We can help you find the way.

 

 

Every time we plan a journey, we launch ourselves into an uncertain future. We put our hopes, our goals, our safety in the hands of others. And not just those who build the machines and routes to move us, not just those who operate and maintain them, but also those who create the ways we navigate from where we are now to where we want to be. Whether across a town, a continent, a galaxy or an ambition; navigation is key.

 

On arriving at each Hackathon destination, the first thing we experience is the transport within that location. We find ourselves, new and young each time, in an unfamiliar place, with somewhere we need to be. How to we get there? Often the smallest and most immediate steps are the hardest. We know there is a train, but how do we find the platform it is leaving from?

 

“As an avid world traveller, I have faced many challenges when trying to use public transport in non-English-speaking countries like Russia where even signs were in a local language and very few people spoke English.” – Ion Morozan, Software Engineer, Product Designer, Y4PT Hackathon Participant and Winner

 

Replace “English” with Russian, Arabic, Spanish, Hausa, or whatever our mother tongue may be, and we find we are all of us thrown each time into a moment of uncertainty on arrival in any place that does not share a language we are already familiar with. The joy of growing understanding during our stay will come, but first we must overcome the initial confusion. Right at the time when we need to achieve something very practical and specific! And the confusion is not just with words; symbols, patterns, placement and customs taken for granted can be very different. Even a small difference can shake it up – people travelling from one city to another sharing the same language still often find the differences overwhelming.  

 

It is the same in our lives and work, when striving to achieve a powerful fresh goal. It is often the most immediate, tiny, practical steps into the the new that are the most daunting. It is the same pattern of challenge each Y4PT Hackathon team faces, when generating and beginning work on a new idea.

 

“Looking from different perspectives, taking into account the different needs that people have in their lives and countries. And this, I think, is not a matter of country. We’ll be there to share our experience, and to create something that will hopefully be available to a lot of people all over the world.” – Massimo Santi, Mechanical Engineer, Y4PT Hackathon Participant and winner.

 

Many translate that experience directly into solutions. Joint winners of the 2017 Global Finale in Montréal, “UpWay”, took on the challenge of Metro navigation head-on with a combination of Augmented Virtual Reality, and Bluetooth beacons. In Dubai and Moscow, teams “Alwan” and winners “Portunhol” faced this challenge using the universal language of Colour. “Pomoshnik”, also a winner in Moscow, built on “FindMyTaxi”’s Montréal chatbot development to create a conversational solution, as did “BeMyGuide”. And “SellingRed” so improved navigation in the Moscow Metro that as well as taking 2nd place, the team were taken on to work on the official app, and aid international visitors throughout the FIFA World Cup 2019.  

 

Moving outside the stations to the streets, Dubai Winners “Namshi” proposed moving walkways throughout the city to aid navigation and provide ease of healthy mobility at the same time. Many teams, including “Origin”, also Dubai winners, and “EcoTravellers” used navigation to inform and incentivise healthy and sustainable transport choices, rewarding positive choices.

 

 

Also incentivising healthy mobility, and thinking beyond the limitations of any one city, “Walkarama” (Moscow), focused on building a global walking community.

 

Alongside human navigation, projects have also addressed the logistics of locating and moving physical assets in more sustainable ways. Montréal 3rd place winners combined the two with “uDeliver”’s clever combination of wayfinding and crowdsourced courier service, and IMOVE Berlin winners AKM made mutually beneficial use of host Urbi’s location and usage data to enable sustainable transport providers to better manage their assets.   

 

Y4PT Participants have explored solutions to navigation challenges, and also how navigation impacts all other elements of transport. All with the important advantage of working in teams made up of participants from many countries, and with many different skills. Each knowing how to navigate problems and journeys in their own spheres, and open to sharing with and learning from others.

 

“The ability to share knowledge is something astonishing. If we empower this to its best, we could provide a better life to a lot of people all over the world.” – Massimo Santi, Mechanical Engineer, Y4PT Hackathon Participant and winner.  

 

Now, at the Y4PT Global Hackathon Finale, participants will once more walk bravely into the new. A fresh quest, in the City of Stockholm, among industry leaders and great opportunity at the UITP Summit 2019. In the space of just a few days, ideas will be dreamed, developed, presented and finessed.  Old friends will greet each-other, new friendships and collaborations will be made. The magic of ambition meeting great love for our shared world will again mean our ability to travel is carried far beyond the expected, to where we really want to go.

 

 

“I think that this group of people can solve any problems that we are facing.” – Sabin Dimian, Landscape Engineer, Product Designer, Y4PTHackathon Participant and Winner

 

The expertise and fresh viewpoints of our young participants stand ready to join the discourse and exploration developing our transport of the future. They will be grasping the opportunity to learn from, and to inform the transportation decisions of the future that are developed here, and will be presenting their new ideas and projects at the Y4PT Hackathon Fair – described in 2017 as “The most exciting thing in the Congress”. These are the young people who will challenge and inspire. These are the young people who bring the solutions of the future. Join us in room T6, follow us on social media, invite us to visit your stands, sit on your panels and join your debates.

 

 

Whether you are a delegate, an exhibitor, a speaker, a journalist, an investor, or following us from afar, these are the young people who will help you find your way.

 

“How would you like to see the future? Now go for it, and build your own future!” – Johnny Heesterbeek, Engineer and Y4PT Hackathon Participant

 

– Laura Trevail; Southend & Disneyland Paris. May 2019

 

TEAMS REFERENCED:

 

UpWay: “An augmented reality app to help people find their way in, out and around city transport hubs and underground networks” Aleksandrs Konopackis, Eloi Stree, Jonathan Adiaheno, Charles-Henri Van Nuvel, Ignacio O’Mullony

 

Alwan:  “Breaking the language barrier with colour”   André Borges, Jean Marinho, Bisher Zumot

 

Portunhol: “Colour coding hardware and software solution to help the guidance and management of crowds, inexpensively integrating with existing @moscowmetro technologies” Andre Borges, Luis Martins, Fernando Giraldo Montoya, Esteven, Bernardo Tavares, Vreixo Gonzales Caneda

 

Pomoshnik: “Passenger communication platform integrated into existing Moscow Metro application, providing route planning, ticketing, security & live support” Ion Morozan, Sabin Dimian, Riccardo Scarinci, Mariam Khalifeh, Emma Phiri, Stefan Binder, Uli Stroetz

 

FindMyTaxi: “Decreasing wait times for shared taxis in developing countries” Emma Phiri, Keven Villeneuve, Myriam Beauvais, Abhishek Gupta, Poyan Nabati, Sebastien Blais-Fernandez

 

BeMyGuide: “Virtual assistant for easy, clean & sustainable city navigation”  Dafne Medina, Diego Cardenas

 

Selling Red: “Gamification app about #moscowmetro life. RL quests, which can be promoted by local businesses, provide users with points to spend at the inner metro e-shop” Rimikhanov Husein, Vladislav Bakhanov, Nikolai Zhikin, Dmitry Kuznetsov, Stanislav Vorobiev

 

Namshi: “Eco-friendly city moving walkways” | Facundo Di Giacomo, Simon Carpman, Riccardo Scarinci, Mariam Khalifeh

 

Origin: “App rewarding green route choices” | Soorya Kumar, Shaurya Sood, Bilal Shabandri, Kevin Martin

 

EcoTravellers: “AR trip planner rewarding green routes” | Ahmad Mehravaran, Fares Bou Najm, Hadi El Baba, Mostafa El Sayed

 

Walkarama: “Walk the world from your phone” Ignacio O’Mullony, Vreixo Gonzalez

 

uDeliver: “A city logistics crowdsourcing solution connecting commuters to parcel delivery”  Filip Ivic, Tomas Janovsky, Jan Kouba, Tomas Kouba,, Matej Kuraja, Dejan Pavkovic, and Uli Stroetz

 

AKM: “Helping sustainable mobility providers optimise physical resources” Kai-Ting Chan, Abhinav Suman Paul, Matthias Kuhn