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Bombardier launches innovation contest on the future of Urban Mobility

Bombardier launches innovation contest on the future of Urban Mobility

Bombardier Transportation launched its interactive YouCity innovation contest. The online competition is open to students and professionals with a vision for the future of urban mobility – from developed cities to emerging cities of the future. Candidates are asked to develop their concepts in one of three workstreams focused on: engineering (product definition, technical concept), business (business model, stakeholders, financing strategy) and urban planning (network layout, urbanism concepts, integration). They will be asked to apply their proposals to one of three types of cities: mature markets, BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) or new emerging markets.

The winning concepts will be evaluated by experts at Bombardier and voted for by YouCity’s online community at www.youcity.bombardier.com as well as on social media. Candidates are asked to register on the website by May 13, 2012, with each competing team allowed up to five members. To focus the contest, Bombardier has selected three cities to represent the different markets for urban mobility around the world: London, UK (mature market), Belo Horizonte, Brazil (BRIC market) and Vientiane, Laos (emerging market). Each team will choose which city and which stream they wish to compete in. The deadline for final submissions is mid-June 2012, after which the designers of the top concepts in each stream will be invited to Bombardier Transportation’s head office in Berlin, Germany, to collaborate on a final proposal.

The winners will be invited to Berlin to develop a joint proposal for the future of urban mobility. They will present their proposal at InnoTrans, the world’s largest trade fair focused on the rail transport industry, in Berlin in September 2012. In hosting this online competition, Bombardier is building on the success of its YouRail design competition, presented at the last InnoTrans in 2010. That competition attracted 4,239 entries and 8,565 comments on the future interior design of passenger trains. Many of these fed into ongoing research and development projects. Bombardier also contracted the services of one of the winners for the Industrial Design team at its site in Hennigsdorf, Germany.

“With more than two thirds of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2050, these commercial and cultural hubs urgently need to evolve in terms of improving the mobility of their populations and driving sustainable economic growth,” said Martin Ertl, Chief Innovation Officer for Bombardier Transportation. “Our YouCity contest will provide innovators of the future a unique platform to demonstrate what smart urban mobility will look like on the horizon.”