Policy Area Transport
PA Transport promotes sustainable, efficient and eco-friendly transport in the Baltic Sea Region.
Increased prosperity of the Baltic Sea Region has a strong dependence on efficient, affordable and sustainable cross-border connections within the Baltic Sea Region and beyond. Transport corridors have vital economical and socio-economical effect as they improve trade and movement of people between different regions or part of urban areas.
The Policy Area Transport stimulates the implementation of innovative and high-tech solutions (both technical and digital) in transport sector. The importance of all modes of transport – land, rail, waterborne and aviation is hereby acknowledged.
PA Transport is currently coordinated by the Ministry of Climate, Estonia and the Transport Innovation Association, Lithuania.
Actions
In the aviation sector, PA Transport’s priorities are connectivity and environmentally sustainable flights; in shipping the efforts go to green shipping and its effects to cargo and passenger transportation, and in land transport the focus is on intelligent transportation systems, digital documents and use of alternative fuels.
Improve connectivity of the regions and cooperation with third countries.
The prosperity of the Baltic Sea Region has a strong dependence on cross-border cooperation (incl. third countries), foreign trade and international exchange of knowledge and services. The TEN-T core network corridors (CNC), their connection with third countries and Motorways of the Sea (MoS) play an important role. It is still of key importance to ensure effective physical and functional access of the urban nodes and farther located rural & peripheral regions to the three core network corridors crossing the Baltic Sea Region.
Development of measures towards climate-neutral and zero pollution transport.
Transport is responsible for a substantial part of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, making it the secondbiggest emitting sector after energy. Significant reductions in the emissions from the transport and logistics sector are needed when the EU is to achieve its long-term climate goals. The EU has recently adopted policies that will help the EU stay on track with its climate commitments (e.g. the Communication on the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy (COM/2020/789 final)29 and its Action Plan (SWD(2020) 331 final) of 9 December
2020, Green Deal). Focus will be put on transformation towards a fossil –free society. The Baltic Sea Region is ideally placed to be a pioneer in the greening of the transport sector in Europe (e.g. through coupling of sectors). Synergies with reducing emissions of air pollutants from transport should be encouraged.
Facilitate innovative technologies & solutions in the Baltic Sea Region.
The Action will aim at facilitation (creation of added value) of a sustainable and efficient transport system in the Baltic Sea Region requiring – along with infrastructural investments – also innovative measures dwelling on new technologies. The digitalisation, automation, 5G technology, Blockchain technology and synchromodal transport solutions are key instruments to reduce bottlenecks, transport externalities and improve the utilisation of payload capacities along the supply chain. This should be achieved by regional stakeholders mobilising resources, which aim to optimise knowledge flows and spread the benefits of innovations to the entire macro regional (Baltic Sea region ) economy. Realisation of Smart Specialisation (S3) policies is a great tool for the achievement of the above-mentioned goals. A preliminary survey of S3 in the Baltic Sea Region (performed in 2019) revealed the necessity, first of all, to cooperate in creating innovative transport corridor management models and the autonomous controlled vehicles including their interconnection (internet of things) and connections with road infrastructure on the entire Baltic Sea Region level.