The Department of Sustainable Mobility of the Basque Government is leading a project to foster cross-border public transport. As part of this role, the department has involved another six European administrations with the aim of improving regional and national policies to implement the Single European Railway Area, remove barriers and open up the market to new entrants and services.
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(14/11/2024)
Delegations from the Basque Country (including Euskotren and Euskal Trenbide Sarea), Slovenia, Portugal, Germany, Hungary, France and the Netherlands held two days of working meetings in Bilbao and Irún to combine strategies and share experiences.
In order to achieve climate neutrality in the European Union by 2050, the railway must be the backbone of the transport system that connects the main urban areas: urban buses and trams provide connections within cities, and regional trains and buses improve access to remote areas.
Levels of service
These three levels of service cooperate to sustainably cover three complementary scales: interregional, provincial and urban. The cross-border public transport challenge is based on the need to offer competitive door-to-door solutions in regional contexts based on questions like operational needs, technology, governance, demand, sustainability, etc.
Thus, the project aims to develop policies to improve cross-border transport, as only 7% of rail passenger traffic is cross-border and from 2001 to 2019 the total services between countries grew by just 1%.
One of the objectives is to integrate cross-border transport strategies with local, regional and national policies so they reflect the potential and the needs, as well as to increase the number of cross-border travellers as active players in the development of new sustainable, climate-resistant, smart, intermodal transport.
The initiative launched between the seven regional administrations, for which they have a budget of 1.5 million Euros, aims to make sustainable transport an easy option, in terms of price, schedules and adequate connections, and to ensure sufficient availability of trains, carriages and locomotives, accelerating the modernisation of infrastructure, digitization and interoperability.
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