The European Union is finally focusing on an urban transport policy
By Pavel Antonov
Traffic jams have been an all-too-familiar experience during my 15 years of driving in big East European cities. In fact, at one point I thought I'd grown savvy enough to avoid them instinctively. But things are getting worse. Just like extreme climate, extreme traffic is getting more and more difficult to predict. And having recently spent an hour in an unexpected traffic swarm — on a seemingly calm Saturday morning — I finally made up my mind to go public. To use public transport, that is.
I'm glad that urban transport has finally become an EU concern. I am just one among 80 percent of Europeans who live and work in urban centres, and developing a new policy on urban transport is among the European Commission's strategic priorities for 2007. As a result of a year-long consultation, DG Energy and Transport announced the September publication of a green paper demonstrating a commitment to move sustainable urban transport to the front of the EU policy queue. Jacque Barrot, the EC's vice-president in charge of transport, said in June that the green paper and its follow-up activities will "form the basis of a genuine European policy on urban transport-one which reinforces policies at other levels of government, and particularly in the cities themselves."
Barrot also referred to one of the major difficulties that the new policy aims to resolve: subsidiarity. In other words: Who'll be in the driver's seat when deciding on urban transport? Will it be municipal or national governments that will establish and implement such policies? As with many other CEE cities, public transport in Budapest is run by the municipality, and is pretty well organised. At the same time, Hungary's government recently released HUF 450 billion (EUR 180 million) in funding for five urban public transport projects, according to national news agency MTI.
In order to collect different views on the green paper and urban transport in general, between January and June 2007 the European Commission organised an internet consultation, four technical workshops and two stakeholder conferences. The EC received over 900 responses from citizens and stakeholder organisations. According to Zoltan Kazatsay, deputy director-general of DG Energy and Transport, subsidiarity should not be viewed as an obstacle, but rather as a challenge and an opportunity. At the second technical workshop in Szentendre, Hungary, Kazatsay explained that while European cities are "in the best position to select and implement the right portfolio of measures, the EU's role will be to identify, in partnership with all parties, whether there are obstacles to successful urban transport policies and to propose joint solutions for specific actions."
The EU green paper provides new bases for sharing good practices, harmonisation, coordination and cooperation, financial support, simplifying existing legislation and, in certain cases, introducing new legislation.
Responding to rising demand for information, the EC launched the European Local Transport Information Service (ELTIS), a portal for local transport news and events, transport measures, policies and practices implemented across Europe. It now contains over 800 online case studies have, some of which have been translated into Czech, Polish and Hungarian, said ELTIS Coordinator Robert Pressl. Such EC initiatives show well how local action can be efficiently coupled with Europe-wide cooperation.
More information on the green paper on urban transport can be found here.
