The way in which we will shape the future of transport will decide on the way in which Europe develops a sustainable future. Around 75% of EU’s citizens lives in urban areas which makes sustainable urban mobility the EU’s priority strategic objective. Just as the Green Paper (Towards a new culture for urban mobility) highlights that the cities stimulate Europe’s economy, urban transport provides connectivity and maximises the economic performance of urban areas sharing the benefits of its performances as regards the improvement of the life quality, environment protection, reducing emissions and a clean transport.
Significant infrastructure investments are necessary to answer the increasing demand for urban public transport (due to urbanisation and modal shift from private motorized transport) both for new constructions and the modernisation of the existing ones, especially for tram and underground, the only environmentally friendly means of transport which also ease traffic and increase the socialisation level for each city. In these circumstances, the European Union plays the most important role in ensuring and facilitating urban mobility financings which meet EU’s objectives for 2020.
Therefore, considering the financial perspectives by 2020, EU has to grant a major importance to urban transport by allocating funds through future budgets. Financial support will help cities meet transport decarbonisation targets which, in turn, will help reach the expected climate change results, will encourage modal shift in urban area and will increase the quality of life by improving the air quality.
The financing of SEGMENT project (EUR 1.77 Million, with 75% EU contribution) carried out in the period 2010-2013 makes possible the promotion of a life style “without private cars”, will help build strategies and methodologies whose goal is to reduce energy consumption, will bring significant changes as regards public transport mindset and its benefits to life quality. The project is implemented in 7 partner-cities (Hounslow-UK, Almada-Portugal, Athens-Greece, Sofia-Bulgaria, Utrecht-Netherlands, Gdynia-Poland and Munich-Germany). From 2011 to 2012, important campaigns will be carried out and the impact and results of the project will be evaluated in the first half of 2013.
The implementation of the project will maximise the impact of using public transport in most European cities, seeking to identify potential new “consumers” for changing the mindset about transportation and bringing them together in homogeneous groups (as regards their attitude towards using cars, electrical vehicles, public transport) in order to identify energy-efficiency needs and to increase public transport modal share.
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