EUROPEAN Stakeholders express their views
The FP7 project TRANSFORuM has released four “stakeholder-driven” roadmaps towards the implementation of the European Commission’s White Paper on Transport. TRANSFORuM focuses on four goals of this visionary document and provides respective recommendations:
Clean urban mobility (Goal: Halve the use of conventionally fuelled cars by 2030)
- The technological transformation currently moves ahead too slowly;
- Controlling the volumes of car and truck traffic are at least as important;
- Providing convenient alternatives to cars must be part of the solution;
- We need more and better dialogue and collaboration among stakeholders.
Long-distance freight (Goal: Shifting 50% of road freight over 300 km to rail or waterborne by 2050)
- Substantial shift of investment funding from road to rail and waterborne is required;
- New tracks will be needed, but existing capacity can be used much more efficiently;
- Higher fees on truck transport is crucial; better enforcement existing rules is also important;
- Rail and waterborne need to provide more customer oriented services and cut costs;
High-speed rail (Goal: Most medium-distance passengers use rail instead of cars or planes)
- Tripling the length of the high-speed rail network must mean tripling demand;
- Different economic, social and territorial features across Europe matter greatly;
- Extending the high-speed rail network doesn’t necessary means building new tracks;
- New infrastructure has to be carefully prioritised (e.g. not every cross-border link make sense).
Multimodal transport information, management & payment systems (Goal: Framework by 2020)
- Independent start-ups could do much more if they had they data;
- Business interests and investments must be protected;
- The balance between convenience and privacy must be very finely tuned;
- Integration of local and long distance transport is essential;
- Defined data exchange formats are necessary to ensure compatibility.
These conclusions are of highest relevance for all players in the European transport arena, including policy makers, businesses, service providers, operators etc. They are also extremely important as input for the forthcoming review of the Transport White Paper.
High-level representatives of the European Commission, influential actors from the private sector and renowned academics have already announced their presence at the TRANSFORuM conference. Among them are Magda Kopczyńska (DG MOVE, Director Innovative and Sustainable Mobility) and Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research).
All speakers and panellists are mentioned in the online agenda at http://www.transforum-project.eu/events/dec-2014-brussels.html. Participation is free of charge but requires a pre-registration at http://www.transforum-project.eu/?id=135. The event will also transmitted through a live video stream. See http://www.transforum-project.eu/events/dec-2014-brussels.html.
The event is co-organised by the European Economic and Social Committee and will take place at its premises (Rue Belliard, 99. B-1040 BRUSSELS).
