The UVAR Box Final Conference marked the end of the two-year EU project UVAR Box. It aimed to digitise urban vehicle access regulations (UVARs) of Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Italy. The event was attended by around 70 stakeholders and consortium members on 7 September 2022 (30 participants in Brussels and 40 participants online).

Over the past two years, the consortium, and especially the country coaches (members of the consortium with an expertise on UVARs or digitisation in their attributed country), worked together to digitise the UVARs and create a cooperational framework. This framework will hopefully last longer than the project duration and enable further cities and countries to submit data and digitise their UVARs, beyond the geographical focus of the project.  

The three-hour session, which was organised by POLIS Network, sparked significant interest. It showed the importance of the topic of UVARs, an increasingly important policy solution to reduce the burden of traffic and vehicles’ emissions in European cities.

The efforts to harmonise the UVAR-related information will continue with the follow-up project of UVAR Exchange. It aims to enable EU-wide harmonised physical signs, working with EU organisations responsible for road sign coordination. It also addresses variable message signs (VMS) and the provision of information directly to a connected vehicle via Cooperative Intelligent Transport System (C-ITS) messages.