Smart Station is a complete renovation of existing public transport stations in Bucharest. It caters both to the people, by adding several facilities to the station and to the public authorities, by giving them more relevant data to use in the decision-making process.
Local
Romania
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Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Asociatia Solar Decatlon Bucuresti Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Răzvan-Florin Last name of representative: Hilea Age: 23 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Gender: Male Nationality: Romania Function: Technical Coordinator Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Bvd Lacul Tei 112 Town: Bucuresti Postal code: 020394 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40 726 782 592 E-mail:razvan.hilea@efden.org Website:https://efden.org/
Smart Station is an upgrade for existing public transportation stations in Bucharest. At the moment, they only provide some refuge against the weather. With Smart Station, we aim to transform the time spent waiting into time well spent. Starting from the initial purpose of a public transportation station, that is, waiting for the bus, tram, etc, we asked ourselves: what’s missing and how can we improve the experience? We arrived at three major conclusions: aesthetics, sustainability and innovation.
Within the aesthetics direction, we plan a major revamp to the appearance of the station. The current structure is made entirely out of metal, with a glass background. We will be replacing the glass background with a wooden riflage, acting as a supporting structure for climbing plants.
The sustainability direction is aimed at making the station energy independent, through the use of solar panels and batteries. We have also planned a recycling corner, to encourage proper waste disposal.
The innovation comes through the use of sensors and the applications. Our prototype will contain a set of Air Quality, Temperature and Humidity sensors, among others. The purpose is that through widespread implementation of the Smart Station, real-time maps will be created to aid in decision making at the city hall level. The main application of the station will allow users to plan their journey according to traffic conditions, while also being able to see the data collected by the sensors in real time.
Aesthetics
Sustainability
Innovation
People
Mobility
Our approach to sustainability revolved around three directions: materials, energy and nature.
The station we designed is essentially an upgrade kit to existing bus stops in Bucharest. Not more than five years ago, a number of new bus stops were installed across the city. However, they are only husks of metal and glass, without any useful features. Through our project we want to elevate their status to Smart Stations, without needing to rebuild them from scratch and simply discarding the materials.
The station is energy independent on a yearly basis, meaning that the surplus produced in summer will be enough to cover the station needs in winter. We achieve this through a combination of solar panels and reused electric vehicles batteries, that have achieved the end of their life as a car battery, but can still be used for smaller scale purposes. The station will still be connected to the grid, as the batteries only serve as emergency backups. In summer, the bulk of the surplus energy will be provided to the grid, only to be taken back during winter.
Nature is taken into account on a smaller scale, given the size restrictions of a bus stop. As previously mentioned, the background glass wall will be replaced with a wooden riflage, acting as support for climbing plants. The watering of these plants is done automatically, through the use of rainwater. In another one of our projects we successfully implemented and tested a rainwater harvesting system, which we plan to implement in this project as well.
Besides the interactive screen hosting the application, there is also an informative screen which we plan to use for promoting sustainable lifestyle choices and to raise awareness regarding sustainability issues.
The Smart Station revolves around people. It will be a spot passed by many people everyday, so it is only natural that it caters to them. The main improving point of the station will be the application of the station, which will allow even the older population, who doesn’t own a smartphone, to be able to plan the optimum route towards their destination.
The overall design of the station follows closely the original form of the station. However, we decided to move away from right angles and sharp corners and adopt instead a more nature inspired design. Through the integration of wood into the sitting area and green wall, the use of plants to provide fresh air and overall an inviting and open feeling, we aim to convince the citizens of Bucharest to use these upgraded and improved stations and subsequently, the public transport.
Transformations should also favour social inclusion, for instance by considering affordability and accessibility of the place, using the preservation and restoration of its environment as a common task for the whole community to work together, or using green areas as connectors / common and shared spaces across different districts.
Our objectives are to promote inclusion, creating projects for everyone, where students from different backgrounds feel welcomed. In our team, we are keen on respecting gender equality and diversity. Regarding the recruitment of our volunteers, we want to eliminate the possibility of unconscious biases.
Our design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.
The main feature of the Smart Station, the application for route planning, will be as simple as possible and properly placed within the station such that anyone can use it for its designed purpose, no matter educational background or age.
The design is equitable, useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities. For example, we designed a space near the bench, to accommodate users of varying height, or an individual who uses a wheelchair, where we can accommodate them in a space where they can be protected from weather conditions.
EFdeN is an NGO mainly composed of undergraduate students. In Bucharest, public transport is still the preferred way of transport for this population segment. The team that developed the Smart Station concept is made up entirely of students learning Architecture, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering or Communication Sciences. They created everything, from the initial sketches and ideas to the final concept and calculations, and they will be the ones who will build the prototype.
As for the impact of our project, we followed 2 main goals. Firstly, the educational component of the project is achieved by the highly informative value of the project. The involved students will have a great opportunity to learn from this experience, visitors of the station do not only come here to wait for buses, but also to learn about energy efficiency and sustainability. However, the most valuable achievement is that those who use the station learn to view sustainability as an integrated aspect of the urban space and grow more and more accustomed to ecological alternatives and further implement them.
Secondly, we want to change the face of public transport from Bucharest and the first step is to improve the waiting space. This can be a big step to encourage citizens to use public transport, because one of the most important reasons people don’t use it is the uselessness of the waiting space, mostly on bad weather days.
In order to design a space for the community, we also desired to include those benefiting from the project in the conceptual phase of our prototype. In order to do so, our team launched a co-creation competition where teams enrolled to design the public transport like a part of the city of tomorrow. In this competition 8 finalist teams from different fields of work and formation took part. They won part of the implementation budget and the possibility to build their projects with us.
Smart Station wouldn't be possible without public administration and citizens, so we developed this in partnership with them. We started some public questionnaires, to know what problems, difficulties and struggles citizens have every day. After this, we made some plans, ideas and solutions and we are in the process of signing partnerships with competent authorities.
Some months ago, we pitched our project in front of the most relevant people from public administration and mobility, they gave us very good feedback and now we are waiting to receive a disused public station. In the meantime we are involved in fundraising activities for this project for the implementation budget, so the New European Bauhaus Prize will be great for us.
EFdeN is an NGO mainly composed of undergraduates. They come from most universities in Bucharest, ranging from Architecture and Interior Design all the way to Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. Within the association, the projects’ teams are created with multidisciplinarity in mind, meaning that any team has aspiring architects, engineers, communication, environment science and fundraising people.
The Smart Station project was born two years ago, during the Co-Creation Contest EFdeN held, where more than 50 students, professionals and NGO’s got involved. The contest’s main objective was for teams to find ways to improve the cities of the future, through small objectives that they could build themselves. One of the winning teams was the Smart Station team, which proposed a revamp of the existing public transport stations in Bucharest. They were mainly composed of Architecture students, but after winning the competition, they were incorporated into EFdeN and several other students joined them to create the Smart Station team. Through departmental working meetings, weekly status updates between departments and by the end of the project, interdepartmental working meetings, the final form of the project took shape.
The stations are usually not the main focus when it comes to improvements in public transportation. The focus is usually on the vehicles themselves, as the most amount of time spent by travelers is inside of them. However, studies have shown that travelers would be willing to pay more for tickets if it meant better waiting conditions and that more people would use the public transport if the stations were brought to a higher standard of quality. There are plenty of smart public transport stations being developed, but they are essentially new products. Our Smart Station is an upgrade kit. While it is designed for Bucharest's stations, similar upgrade kits can be developed for stations around the world.
Moreover, the sensors installed within the station are a novelty, not because of their technology but through their use in a public transportation station. Using the data provided by several such stations, meaningful maps can be created to provide insights into how air quality, temperature, humidity and other monitored parameters are changing throughout the city. For example, by monitoring how busy the stations are during a certain time, more buses could be dispatched to meet the demand, instead of frustrating the citizens.
Smart Station was designed to be an upgrade kit for the existing public transport stations in Bucharest. Given their current facilities, we wanted to bring them to a higher standard while also diversifying their uses.
However, this doesn’t mean that these kits are exclusive to this type of station. The underlying structure is easy to build and as such, not an impediment for replication. Moreover, all our projects are open-source, to encourage others to adapt and implement the good practices models we create.
Part of EFdeN’s mission is to be a launching pad for professionals. Through our projects, undergraduates take part in hands-on activities and are able to see first hand their impact through their actions. This process the students take part in is a fulfilling experience for them, since they can peek into their future careers and decide early on whether they want to continue with their chosen path or switch careers. In EFdeN’s history, there have been plenty of examples of students reevaluating their choices and doing 180 degree turns. We believe that projects such as ours can help young people figure out through practical experiences what they want their future career to look like.
As mentioned previously, Smart Station was designed to be an integrated solution for multiple problems we identified in Bucharest.
The first and foremost was the citizens' use of public transport. We wanted to encourage public transportation through better waiting experience for the passengers, by giving them realistic time estimates for their journeys and easier to access trip planning tools. These aspects are not unique to our city, therefore these stations can be used as examples for how to improve public transportation use.
In recent years, air quality has become a rising concern, mainly in crowded cities. Along with it came the need for efficient monitoring systems that can accurately measure a set of parameters, from fine particulate matter to temperature and humidity. Such monitoring stations may be difficult to integrate meaningfully, as they are usually bulky and not pleasing to the eye. Integrating them in pre-existing structures, like we did with our Smart Station, is a possible solution to this problem.
