On 12-13 December, the HZ Putnicki Prijevoz (Croatian Railways - Passenger Transport) hosted in Zagreb the third steering committee meeting of the project INTER-CONNECT (Intermodality Promotion and Rail Renaissance in Adriatic – Ionian Region) financed under the Interreg ADRION Programme and supported by the ERDF and IPAII funds.
Project partners had the chance to discuss the state-of-the-art of the project, the next steps to be taken and to present an update on the state of play and evaluation of the eight case studies promoting intermodality and rail-use.
The CEI-Executive Secretariat outlined the progress of the two sub-cases it had been assigned, regarding the analysis and evaluation of the improvement of inter-modality in Trieste with a particular focus on the local public transport connections with the maritime seasonal lines to Slovenia and Croatia. The main takeaways of the related roundtable (July 2018) and dissemination event (November 2018) were highlighted, in particular the agreement of all the stakeholders to promote measures improving accessibility and information provided to passengers.
Furthermore, the meeting focused on three specific technical aspects of the INTER-CONNECT project:
The HZ Putnicki Prijevoz presented the final study on policies supporting Intermodality and rail use. The report summarises the international, regional and national strategies and policies elaborated and presenting tangible recommendations for stakeholders such as to increase off-season tourist arrival, create macro-regional tourists routes, limit environmental impacts, reduce the time at regional border crossings, establish a common platform of all countries for data collection and establish strong cooperation schemes to improve “accessibility”. The report revises the existing policy frame and aims to be a useful tool for transport stakeholders, revealing the real needs of INTER-CONNECT partners.
The Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region presented the final report on capitalisation of previous findings in passenger’s intermodal transport and lessons learned which would feed the roadmap formulation and the capacity toolkit. The purpose of the activity was to collect good practices from participating regions and verify which best international practices could be implemented in the case studies. Key takeaways of the report were the need to involve stakeholders from the private and public sector at all stages of the activities and the importance of knowledge transfer from different EU projects as well as to align International, European and national strategies in order to find common grounds of action.
The Institute for Transport and Logistics Foundation focused on the transferability analysis and implications for future actions.
Finally, the CEI-Executive Secretariat, also responsible for the project’s communication & dissemination activities gave an overview of the implemented and remaining actions, stressing the need for intensified involvement from partners in the realisation of specific activities.
The next meeting is foreseen to take place in Bar, Montenegro in July 2019.
For more information: dileno@cei.int
