The third MORE TEN-T Network workshop took place as an online session on 14 December 2020.
As part of a series of workshops aimed at discussing common challenges of cities located on EU TEN-T corridors, this online event brought together MORE pilot cities, representatives of urban nodes, the European Commission, and other relevant stakeholders that have worked on the challenge of realising a more sustainable and effective integration of urban nodes in the TEN-T network.
The main topic of the workshop was the upcoming revision of the TEN-T guidelines by the European Commission, a sensitive subject that represents a core interest of cities, transport users, and other types of stakeholders along TEN-T corridors.
The workshop kicked off with an introduction to the project MORE by the scientific coordinator of the project, prof. Peter Jones (UCL), and to one of its pilots in the city of Constanta by George Lupascu (Constanta Municipality).
The discussion then focused more in the specific on the revision of the TEN-T Regulation. Philippe Chantraine, Deputy Head of Unit Transport Investment at DG MOVE, illustrated context, guiding principles, challenges, and main objectives of the European Commission for the revision process. We are now at the end of the evaluation phase that included an Open Public Consultation in which more than 600 stakeholders provided their feedback. This structured dialogue contributed to a better understanding of what has worked well and of the aspects that have to be improved or redefined. The impact assessement phase has started at the end of 2020 and will run until summer 2021, with a legislative proposal to be expected in autumn 2021.
The workshop also aimed at providing a possibility for discussion and exchange to initiatives and projects that have developed recommendations for the revision of the TEN-T Regulation. Françoise Guaspare of the Ile-de-France Region represented the ad-hoc group established by the networks of cities and regions POLIS and ERRIN. This working group drafted a set of recommendations oriented to a deeper integration of urban nodes in the TEN-T Network, as well as at strengthening innovation, intermodality and sustainability in urban nodes. The final presentation was provided by Sjaak van der Werf of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water and coordinator of the project Vital Nodes. He presented an overview of the approach of the project for urban nodes, which represent the overlap of the urban mobility dimension and the TEN-T network dimension, as well as the validated recommendations of the project for effective and sustainable integration of all 88 urban nodes into the TEN T corridors, with a particular focus on freight logistics.
The full recording of the workshop is available here.
You can also check out the presentations of the speakers:
- Peter Jones – Introduction to MORE
- George Lupascu – MORE Case study: Constanta
- Philippe Chantraine – Revision of TEN-T guidelines: Objectives and guiding principles
- Françoise Guaspare – Urban nodes in the revised TEN T regulation
- Sjaak van der Werf – Rethinking planning for urban nodes and corridors: lessons from European practice