Encouraging a common EU approach to urban transport

An integrated EU strategy on urban transport is still only an aspiration.

In the meantime, persuading local authorities from Dublin to Budapest to take similar approaches to public transport is a challenge.

Polis, a European Commission-funded network of cities, is keen to encourage authorities to develop their thinking on urban transport together.

Sylvain Haon, director of Polis, says that whereas past thinking on public transport followed a service-based approach, future thinking will be much more led by demand.

This new approach will be essential if passengers are ever to be convinced of relying on public transport. Not only will connections between different modes of traditional public transport - buses, trains, trams, ferries - have to be more efficiently linked into seamless networks, users will have to be provided with real-time information if they are to be persuaded to ditch the car.

Intermodality - links between different modes of transport - is a buzzword in the Polis network. Planners will in future integrate public transport networks with other forms of transport such as taxi services, bicycle-hire centres and even private cars. "The holistic approach is not necessarily something we’ve achieved yet in most EU cities," says Haon.

Polis research programmes, such as the three-year-old Ask-it, will make important contributions to future networks. The Commission-funded programme is investigating the use of positioning technology, such as GPS, the US satellite navigation system, to provide individualised information to people with reduced mobility, such as the elderly and handicapped. The new system would be capable of identifying peoples’ location to provide targeted assistance.

The ability of local authorities to hook up, pool resources and swap best practices will play a big part in the success of EU public transport policy. While a great deal of strategic emphasis is geared towards homogenisation, however, the importance of regional autonomy cannot be forgotten. The intention is that, provided with a sensible framework by the Commission in the forthcoming green paper on urban transport, authorities will still be in charge of local decisions on public transport.

An integrated EU strategy on urban transport is still only an aspiration.