Last autumn, the European Commission adopted an Action Plan on Urban Mobility. The Action Plan proposes 20 concrete measures to help local, regional and national authorities achieve their goals for sustainable urban mobility. The Action Plan is a follow-up to the Green Paper on Urban Mobility that was adopted two years earlier in September 2007.<\/p>\n
The European Federation of Inland Ports (EFIP) welcomes the initiative taken by the European Commission to raise the debate on urban mobility at a European level. Indeed, even if local authorities are best placed to define and implement urban mobility policies it is clear that urban transport systems are an integral element of the European transport system. Rightly, the Commission stresses that urban mobility is a central component of long distance transport since most of the transport starts, passes through or ends in an urban area. Urban transport is as such a vital element of a competitive and sustainable transport system. And, of course, it is not to the European level to decide on how a town should organise its mobility and answer to the challenges they face. But Europe can play a role when it comes to exchanging best practices, promoting solutions and advising local authorities on the way forward. Moreover, Europe can help local authorities in pushing for less straight forward but good and sustainable solutions for their transport problems.<\/p>\n
And if we are now looking more specifically at the role inland ports can play in contributing to a sustainable urban transport policy, we identify three priorities:<\/p>\n
Inland ports offer efficient interconnection points for the trans-European transport network in urban areas.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The European Commission stresses that urban areas should provide efficient interconnection points for the trans-European transport network, and offer \u201clast mile\u201d transport for both freight and passengers. EFIP believes that inland ports can play an important role in providing an efficient interconnection point between road transport and other environmentally friendly modes of transport. An inland port is functioning as a real \u201cgate\u201d and access point to waterborne and rail transport. The other way round, inland ports can help in making the \u201clast mile\u201d transport as efficient and limited as possible by bringing the goods in a sustainable way into the towns, from where they can be distributed to their final destination. Moreover, inland ports are becoming more and more clusters of urban logistic services. They offer logistic service providers efficient and flexible choices and allow customers to combine the different transport modes depending on the demands of the market or the goods to transport and handle.<\/p>\n Urban areas: Restore the balance between logistic and housing needs<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n