On 15 and 16 January 2020, the fifth Inter-Connect project’s meeting took place in Ljubljana, hosted by the Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region (RDA LUR). The meeting was the occasion for discussing the advancements of the project’s activities and in particular the state of art of the different case studies, focussing on how to improve and promote passengers transport intermodality in the ADRION Region and the roundtables and local dissemination events organised in each Inter-Connect partner country.
Liljana Madjar, directress of Regional development agency of Ljubljana urban region, welcomed all the Inter-Connect partners and introduced the technical sessions, focusing on the importance of the project in promoting better sustainable transport solutions in the Ljubljana urban region and also in ADRION Region. RDA LUR opened the meeting presenting the organisation of the two meeting days and the works conducted for the signature of their local Memorandum of Understanding with the key local transport stakeholders.
The Institute for Transport and Logistics (ITL) and the Emilia-Romagna Region coordinate the activities on the assessment of all the Inter-Connect case studies. Following the defined assessment methodology, each partner presented the advancement of its case study’s implementation. The analysis of the eight Inter-Connect case studies concluded that the provision of seamless intermodal Public Transport (PuT) options, the availability of integrated services (i.e. integrated tickets and harmonized timetables) and the enhancement of the quality of PuT are interventions able to shift travellers’ behaviour towards environmental friendlier ways of transport. All these solutions demonstrate the importance of “Soft Measures” in promoting/improving urban/hinterland and cross border intermodality in ADRION region. ITL also presented the ongoing activities related to the release of the Inter-Connect Transferring Protocol and policy recommendations derived from Inter-Connect experience on examined cases.
The Central European Initiative-Executive Secretariat (CEI-ES) presented the state of art of the implementation of the technical round tables to be held in each one of the project’s countries and the works in progress regarding the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding, in each Inter-Connect country, related to the promotion of passengers intermodality solutions among the key local, regional and national stakeholders. The next step will be the signature, during the final conference of the project in Trieste in June 2020, of a Transnational Memorandum of Understanding for the promotion of the intermodality at ADRION level. Besides this, the CEI-ES, gave an overview on the communication and dissemination activities implemented and the remaining actions, highlighting the importance of promoting the project’s main results outside of the project partnership.
The Centre for Research and Technology Hellas/Hellenic Institute of Transport (CERTH/HIT), Technical Coordinator of the project, presented the final results of the analysis of the data collection activities (transnational and regional/local transport demand and supply data) conducted in all the Inter-Connect countries. The presented data show that there is still a lot of work to be done for the definition and promotion of reliable and efficient solutions in the ADRION area for cross-border transport. Finally, CERTH/HIT presented the activities related to the future participation of the Inter-Connect project to the ADRION Sustainable projects Thematic Cluster, aiming to enhance transnational and local passengers intermodality in the ADRION area using sustainable modes of transport.
Lastly, the Municipality of Igoumenitsa, Coordinator of the project, presented the administrative and financial progress as well as the state of implementation of the technical work packages of the project. In particular, the lead partner presented all the advancement regarding the conduction of its pilot action in Igoumenitsa. Finally, he underlined the importance of the Inter-Connect final meeting in Trieste in June 2020 as key event to present all the main Inter-Connect technical and political results.
The two days meeting ended with a site visit to the Ljubljana multimodal “Park&Ride Barje” facility.
