Projects and future visions: Three-day workshop by INTERREG Europe
- Cross-border passenger transport: Exchange of more than 20 experts from five European regions in Innsbruck
- Exchange with Mobility Provincial Councilor Zumtobel
How to improve cross-border mobility? What projects might be launched to facilitate local and long-distance passenger transport between different regions? An INTERREG-Europe mobility workshop in the new Euregio campus in Innsbruck dealt with this this week. In addition to the Europaregion Tirol-Südtirol-Trentino, representatives of four other Euregios were present: Euregio Senza Confini (Carinthia, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia), Euregio Maas-Rhein (Belgium, Germany, Netherlands), Euregio Egrensis (Germany-Czech Republic) and the German-Polish partnership on the Oder river.
The aim of the three-day event was to compare the experiences of the Euregio Tirol-Südtirol-Trentino with the experiences of the other four Euregios and to learn from each other. At the end of the event, the results and concrete project ideas were discussed with the Tyrolean Mobility Provincial Council René Zumtobel discussed.
Best practice in the Euregio Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino
“The Euregio Tirol-Südtirol-Trentino has made great progress for its approximately 1.8 million residents in terms of cross-border mobility in the last ten years,” says Provincial Councilor Zumtobel , the cross-border family and student ticket or the integration of the South Tyrolean timetable into the VVT timetable information. The exchange with other Euregions helps everyone involved to develop new concepts and to learn from the experiences of others. It is my clear political goal to further improve public mobility – also across borders – and to think beyond national borders.” The day ticket Euregio2Plus was bought more than 1,800 times within a year and the cross-border Euregio ticket students is also sold with over 2,600 tickets in the in high demand in the last university year.
But cross-border mobility is also on Tyrol’s agenda outside of the Euregio network: “In its role as co-leader of Action Group 4 Mobility, the Euregio Tiro-Südtirol-Trentino is also heavily involved in the EU Alpine Space Strategy EUSALP and is thus pushing the topic outside of the Euregio as well,” says Weiss LR Zumtobel. The focus of the now held three-day INTERREG event, in which more than 20 experts from the four Euregions took part, was the question of how technical and legal obstacles in cross-border public transport can be overcome in the future. With regard to the new INTERREG program Italy-Austria until 2027, concrete projects are now to be developed and submitted for funding. The results of the mobility workshop form an important basis for the development of these forward-looking projects. A specific proposal was, for example, the expansion of connections without transfers in the Euregion – a project that also LR Zumtobel pushes: “There are technical and legal hurdles in the implementation of cross-border connections, but they can be overcome. In the future there will be significantly more continuous and direct train connections between Tyrol and South Tyrol, but also between South Tyrol and Trentino.”
“Future-oriented traffic and mobility concepts are crucial for the further development of the Alpine region. In 2022, we once more had to record 2.5 million trucks and eleven million cars on the Brenner Pass alone. In addition to other measures, the reduction in motorized private transport is an important building block to relieve the Brenner corridor – this requires passenger-friendly cross-border connections and uniform ticketing,” says a delighted LR Zumtobel on the exchange between the Euregios.
