CE4CE’s partnership reflects the whole value chain and transport sector system perspective including 11 project partners from 6 Central European countries (Austria, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia) ranging from public transport authorities/operators, industry and research to interest groups. To facilitate transitioning to circular economy, these partners cooperate basing on co-creation and peer reviews to jointly develop concrete, innovative and state-of-the-art solutions represented by the project’s 6 pilots. These inspirational circular outputs extend from
- predictive maintenance for infrastructure and fleets,
- energy storage in batteries,
- reusing old spare parts for other new purposes giving them further lifetime extension,
- Circularity Compass as a self-assessment tool for public transport,
- Circularity Knowledge platform as a reference database,
- a web-based second-hand marketplace as a matchmaking forum, or
- digital twins as useful cost-benefit and data analysis business tools for cities’ public transport planners and operators helping them to simulate various circular scenarios for public transport electrification upscaling in their locations.
Summarizing, by realistically demonstrating and promoting “use more, reuse and recycle” approaches all CE4CE project pilots profoundly boost knowledge and capacities for the public transport sector, increase resource-efficiency, help reduce barriers and costs, and initiate the development of new services and skilled jobs, as well as strategies and action plans ready for the cities to be adopted, which improve both circular policy and governance development and learning and experience exchange on the regional and transnational level, and thus acting as key enablers for the integration of circular economy principles into public transport.