A policy review – towards a better integrated trans- European transport network at the service of the common transport policy"

1. General remarks
The UITP European Union Committee (EUC) represents public transport undertakings offering rail, road or waterborne urban and regional transport services in the European Union. These include cross-border local and regional rail and/or bus services operated by some of our members.

The EUC welcomes all initiatives of the European Commission (COM) to make transport in general more attractive and would like to offer to bring in the public transport sector’s experiences in the discussions on long distance transport matters.

Among the Target groups mentioned, EUC represents “transport service providers / operators in the different transport sectors”.

“The Commission seeks to involve stakeholders on as broad a basis as possible” – quoted from the Green Paper. By this position paper we want to invite the public transport sector as one of the stakeholders.

2. Public Transport in the light of TEN
In a quick glimpse it seems to be little connection between Public Transport and an infrastructure-heavy body like TEN. But, we have the opinion that there are a few, but very important connections. Realizing them from the beginning can be very cost-effective, which one of the catchwords in the Green paper.

3. Special remarks
1) Climate change threat
We agree that the climate change threat is a sufficient reason for a re-start of the TEN-T project.

2) Connection TEN to Public Transport – “last mile philosophy”
Trans European Network consists of large-scale motorways, railways, flight connections and different types of sea-bound connections for both passenger and freight transport. Especially the railway connections end up at stations and other large-scale terminals. Air-bound
transport ends up at airport terminals. Few passengers have their real destinations at these terminals. Therefore – we want to focus on what we call the “last mile philosophy”. This means that special interest must be put on very good conditions for the public transport
acilities to bring the passengers to their final destination. In the name of “climate change” these facilities must be considerably better than corresponding facilities for the private car.

3) Reserved lanes for buses at motorways
We want to focus on the possibility to use extra – reserved – lanes for buses at motorways.
This is of special interest in dense areas with reduced capacity. Taking care of these needs already in the planning phase will be cost-effective, compared to building extra lanes in already existing infrastructure.

4) ITS – connecting TEN and Public Transport
In the Green Paper the Commission stresses the importance of ITS as very cost-effective
means to increase the quality of the network, independently of transport means. We strongly agree and want to include public transport into this reasoning. Hereby we give the possibility for different TEN-T systems for ITS to communicate with existing and new public transport systems for passenger information, disruption messages etc. By this a situation of comodality can be reached – which also is mentioned as a core value in the Green Paper.

5) Core network – including Public Transport
The Paper describes a “core network” with the aim to be an integral part of the common transport policy. We strongly support this view and declare that public transport has a clear role in this core network.

4. Final remark
As said above, we support the “new” approach for the TEN-T and are looking forward to
further contacts with the Commission for a deep and fruitful discussion on how to incorporate
public transport as a natural part in the future TEN-T development.

http://www.uitp.org/mos/positionspapers/79-en.pdf