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Mobility and Transport

Transport infographics

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    0% - a vision for low carbon mobility in major urban centres by 2030

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    0% - a vision for low carbon mobility in major urban centres by 2030

    Urban areas generate four fifths of the Union’s economic activity and are home to over two thirds of our people. Efficient urban mobility of passengers and freight is essential for growth and jobs, and for the quality of life.
    At the same time, since one quarter of EU transport emissions originate in cities and towns, the European Commission has set two ambitious targets for 2030: to achieve CO2-free logistics in major urban centres, and to halve the use of ‘conventionally fuelled’ cars in urban transport, phasing them out by 2050.
    Transport has a large role to play in helping the European Union meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050.
    With the
    Urban Mobility Package
    , the Commission reinforces its supporting measures in the area of urban transport by:

    • Offering a platform for sharing experiences, show-casing best practices, and fostering cooperation
    • Providing targeted financial support,
    • Focusing research and innovation on delivering solutions for urban mobility challenges,
    • Involving all levels of governance - Member States and regional and local authorities - and enhancing international cooperation.

    Clean fuel technologies offer an effective way to help reduce transport's carbon footprint and pollution and, at the same time, to cut Europe’s costly overdependence on imported oil. They also offer EU companies a huge commercial opportunity, since this market is likely to develop into a major new customer base.
    However, full-scale deployment of these alternative fuels technologies – such as electric cars and buses, or LNG trucks and ships - has been held back by three main barriers: the high cost of vehicles/vessels, poor consumer acceptance and a lack of infrastructure for recharging and refuelling.
    Without adequate infrastructure, this market will not succeed, despite the huge investments that have already been made.
    The EU’s
    Clean Power for Transport initiative requires EU countries to ensure a minimum coverage of refuelling and recharging points throughout their territory, using common standards. It sets the conditions for the creation of an alternative fuels market that will power European transport into the future.

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    Defining one single European Transport Area

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    Defining one single European Transport Area

    Transport is a cornerstone of the European integration process and firmly linked to the creation and completion of the EU single market, promoting jobs and economic growth.

    European transport policy focuses on integrating today’s patchwork of national systems roads, railways, airport, rivers and canals into a fully connected and smoothly-running network: the
    Single European Transport Area
    .

    Building and completing the Single Transport Area means taking a major step closer towards completing the EU’s internal market. Not only will this strengthen Europe’s competitiveness in the global marketplace, it will develop trade, link businesses and people, stimulate growth and create employment.

    However, there are several barriers in the transport sector which are preventing market completion: excessive bureaucracy and administration, technical incompatibilities, differences in technical and administrative standards, bottlenecks and 'missing links' – especially across country borders - along with a lack of competition arising from partially closed or protected markets.

    It is for these reasons that completing the
    trans-European transport system
    is a major policy priority, so that different means of travel are better integrated into a seamless chain to transport passengers, goods and services quickly, smoothly and efficiently - and with minimal environmental impact. Guaranteeing open, fair and non-discriminatory competition is essential so that everyone can compete under equal conditions in the EU single market.

    Recently, the European Commission has taken important regulatory initiatives in the fields of
    Rail transport ,
    Air transport ,
    Airports and
    Ports .

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    Accelerating Single European Sky

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    Accelerating Single European Sky

    More than 10 years since its launch, the Single European Sky project has still not fully achieved its objectives. The project was designed to triple airspace capacity, cut air traffic management costs and environmental impact, and also to improve safety.

    But time is fast running out to prepare for the 50% growth in air travel demand in Europe that is forecast for the next 20 years.

    An urgent problem, firstly, is that there is not yet enough capacity in some airspace blocks and airports. This means that European airspace will be unable to cope with the extra traffic. If nothing is done, airlines and their passengers will face heavy congestion, delays and eventual chaos. Many aircraft would be unable to take off or land at Europe’s busier airports.

    Then, Europe’s airspace today is an inefficient patchwork of national systems, which costs airlines an extra €5 billion each year and raises the price of air tickets for their passengers.

    The airspace is managed by far too many control centres, so aircraft cannot take the most direct route. That adds an average 42 kilometres onto the distance of each flight, forcing aircraft to burn more fuel and generate more emissions. Today’s airspace inefficiencies cause an extra bill of around €5 billion per year.

    But this situation can be remedied, as shown by the example of the United States – which controls the same amount of airspace, but with more traffic and at roughly half the cost.

    Given the urgency of speeding up the changes, the European Commission designed the Single European Sky II+ initiative to inject new impetus into the original project.

    To achieve this, SES II+ envisages making structural changes in the design of European airspace to match flight paths rather than national borders. It will raise cooperation between Member States, create new business opportunities for service providers and use innovative technologies developed through SESAR, the R&D branch of the Single Sky project.

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    More funding for transport infrastructure investment in the EU between 2014 and 2020

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    More funding for transport infrastructure investment in the EU between 2014 and 2020

    The main objective of the
    new European infrastructure policy
    is to complete the Trans-European Transport network (TEN-T). Investments in transport will remove barriers and bottlenecks, and contribute to creating a unified transport system in the EU. This network will make the best combined use of all means of transport in the most efficient, reliable and cleanest way possible

    The TEN-T network is formed by two layers: the comprehensive netwok, which is to be completed by 2050, and the core network, which includes 9 major multi-modal corridors across the EU and is to be completed by 2030. It is estimated that the completion of the TEN-T would require about EUR 500 billion by 2020, of which EUR 250 billion would be needed to complete missing links and remove bottlenecks in the core network.

    EU funding is designed to attract and guarantee further private and public sector investments at Member States, regional and local level. The estimation is that by investing 24 bn in transport infrastructure at EU level, there will be a spill over effect that will cover eventually the 250 bn needed to complete the core network. A study has estimated that the completion of the core network could help create 10 million jobs (calculated in men years) up to 2030.

    The
    Connecting Europe Facility
    (CEF), established by the EU in December 2013, is a dedicated infrastructure fund for transport, energy and telecommunications in the EU’s seven-year budget programme up to 2020 and will put EU resources into projects that are vital for all of Europe’s economy. Within CEF, EU financing for transport infrastructure has tripled to €24 billion for this period to complement national investments for developing the TEN-T. This funding will focus on building the network’s nine major transport corridors, filling in missing cross-border links and removing barriers.

    With the innovative financial instruments under CEF and the European Fund for Strategic Investment, we aim at mobilizing significant private investments that will cover part of the funds needed for the completion of the core network.

    Cost of non-completion of the TEN-T -
    http://ec.europa.eu[site:base-url]/sites/transport/files/2015-06-fraunhofer-cost-of-non-completion-of-the-ten-t.pdf

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    The Fourth Railway Package

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    The Fourth Railway Package

    Rail, despite being a traditional means of transport in Europe and a cleaner than road transport, struggles to compete for both passengers and freight.

    The Fourth Railway Package focuses on revitalising Europe’s rail market so that it achieves its full potential and comprises a genuine single market in itself. It aims to raise rail’s share of transport use, open the sector up to more competition with smoother quality cross-border traffic, and improve service quality and efficiency.

    Today, rail is a split and fragmented sector with diverging rules, standards and a history of protected national markets. Rail authorisations and safety certificates are now issued by each Member State. In the future, to save time and money, trains and rolling stock should be built to a single standard and certified to run everywhere in Europe – saving rail companies €500 million in administrative costs by 2025. Technical compatibility between different national networks is also essential, since this forms the backbone of genuinely cross-border rail services.

    Since national domestic passenger markets remain largely closed, in order to encourage growth and efficiency, they should be opened up to new operators that want to offer services across the EU. This will give passengers more choice and quality. Meanwhile, the European Commission aims at stimulating innovation in the sector by promoting and funding research through the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking.

    To ensure that fair access for all to the tracks, as well as to pan-European routes that work smoothly, the two functions of managing tracks and running trains should be kept separate.

    The Fourth Railway Package will make European railways faster, more punctual, efficient and reliable.

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    Blue Belt: cutting red tape for shipping across five key areas- customs, ports, security, border controls, and health

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    Blue Belt: cutting red tape for shipping across five key areas- customs, ports, security, border controls, and health

    Today, an EU-registered ship sailing from Antwerp to Rotterdam can require the same amount of paperwork as one travelling from Panama to Rotterdam. The aim of the
    Blue Belt
    is to make it as easy for a ship to move from one port to another as for a truck to cross from one EU country to another.

    The Blue Belt initiative aims to make shipping more attractive and competitive as a means to move cargo, by reducing the costs and delays for transporting goods within the EU’s
    internal market
    . Combined with the establishment of
    National Single Windows
    , it will cut complex and lengthy bureaucracy in five main areas: customs, ports, security, border controls and health.

    Since territorial waters are considered as the EU's external borders, ships sailing between
    EU ports are technically leaving the EU customs territory. That means that they need to obtain customs clearance both at the port of departure and again at the port of destination. With Blue Belt, customs administrations no longer treat movements of EU goods between EU ports as exports and imports.

    A harmonised “cargo goods manifest” will be introduced in the implementing acts / delegated acts of the Union Customs code which should be adopted by the Commission before end of 2015, to be accepted as a proof of Union status of goods. This simpler method will be in operation as from May 2016.

    At a later stage, the establishment of a fully EU- harmonised good manifest usable for the common ship pre-arrival and –departure procedures – will be developed. This “eManifest” would be collected via the National Single Window and would include all data necessary for the clearance of ship movements and loading/unloading operations in ports.

    The Blue Belt concept brings European shipping into the 21st century by extending the EU single market to the seas.

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    €6 bn investment in transport research and innovation within the programme for the next seven years

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    €6 bn investment in transport research and innovation within the programme for the next seven years

    The European Union has a strong commitment to funding research as a way to stimulate innovation in transport and to deliver the next generation of cleaner, more efficient planes, trains and cars and infrastructure.

    This is demonstrated by the seven-year Horizon 2020 programme, which runs from 2014 to 2020, where spending on transport research has increased by around 50% to €6.4 billion from the previous budgetary period.

    This financial commitment will help Europe’s transport sector to stay at the cutting edge of future technological advances, at the competitive forefront in the global marketplace.

    It will help the EU to reach its objective of cutting carbon emissions in transport by 60% by 2050, by funding public-private partnership projects such as Clean Sky 2, SESAR 2020, Shift2Rail, and the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking 2.

    These projects are designed to enhance aeronautics research so as to reduce aircraft emissions; to modernise air traffic management as a way to reform Europe’s congested airspace; to help Europe’s rail industry develop new technologies to produce more cost-efficient trains, infrastructure and traffic management systems, for example.

    They will help transport to tackle several challenges that threaten its wider competitiveness: to lessen dependence on imported oil, cut greenhouse gas and other emissions, and reduce congestion.

    Europe’s strengthened commitment to funding transport research and innovation in projects such as these will yield high-quality practical results that will raise competitiveness, drive economic growth and create jobs.

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    5% annual cut in road deaths in the last 5 years

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    5% annual cut in road deaths in the last 5 years

    In recent years, Europe’s roads have become safer. Over the last five years, there has been an annual reduction of 5% in road deaths and a cumulative 18% cut between 2010 and 2014.

    While accident rates still vary widely among Member States the EU as a whole is on track to meet its ambitious goal of halving road deaths by 2020 from 2010 levels, with a “zero vision” for all road deaths by 2050.

    Reducing the numbers of deaths on the roads is a true European success story, thanks to impressive improvements in many EU countries as well as consistency in EU road safety policy. These include more use of safety devices and modern technology, tougher rules on vehicle testing and enforcing penalties for motorists who commit traffic offences - such as speeding, drink-driving and running red lights - in other EU countries.

    Apart from reducing fatalities, EU policy is also focused on reducing serious injuries. For every person killed in a crash, there are an estimated 4 life-long disabled, 10 serious and 40 slight injuries that occur mostly inside built-up areas.

    Common definitions of injuries have been agreed to tackle various national reporting problems, with a view to creating an EU-wide reduction target for serious injuries.

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    8 aviation agreements signed to better connect Europe to the outside world

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    8 aviation agreements signed to better connect Europe to the outside world

    The EU’s external aviation policy aims at opening new business opportunities in fast growing aviation markets, develop new ways to fight unfair competition and create the right regulatory conditions that stimulate investment in open and fair markets.

    Targeted agreements with key partner countries are a cornerstone.

    The agreements should also help to reform international civil aviation and promote the international competitiveness of the EU's aviation industry.

    But these agreements are about more than increasing and expanding traffic rights; they also promote European regulations and standards – safety, security – across the international aviation community, as well as technological cooperation in areas such as air traffic management.

    As of end-2013, the EU had signed eight comprehensive air transport agreements, with Canada, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Moldova, Morocco, the United States and Western Balkans.

    Significant economic gains are expected for both sides. The first of these agreements (signed with Western Balkans and Morocco) generated an estimated €6 billion between 2006 and 2011. This was accompanied by significant declines in ticket prices for air passengers.

    Negotiations are continuing with seven countries, and consideration is being given to opening talks with six further states and the ASEAN regional grouping.

    By improving access to more markets, the agreements allow EU airlines to offer more choice of routes and services to passengers and businesses, as well as more competitive fares.

    • Check the status of aviation relations by country

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    9 major transport corridors to act as the backbone for transportation

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    9 major transport corridors to act as the backbone for transportation

    In 2013, the EU revised the rules governing the
    Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T)
    to modernise and integrate today’s patchwork of national railways, roads, airports, rivers and canals into an efficient network to connect all corners of Europe and make the best combined use of all means of travel. It will link nodes and individual forms of transport, bring all parts of the Union closer to each other and enhance Europe's connections to global markets.

    The new TEN-T is designed to build, by 2030, a core network to fill in missing links, especially across borders. It will be based on more and better infrastructure to create strong transport corridors – air, rail, road and sea – as arteries to facilitate the flow of goods and people.

    Nine corridors , each one spanning several thousand kilometres and reflecting key European transport flows, have been set up to facilitate the implementation of the core network. They will link together major junctions such as cities, ports, airports and other transport terminals.
    Work plans
    have been elaborated for each of these corridors, as well as for the horizontal priorities ERTMS and Motorways of the Sea, which include objectives and main areas of action for development until 2030.

    Each corridor must include at least three different forms of transport, three EU countries and two cross-border sections. As Europe’s main trade gateways, ports will be fully integrated into the corridors with proper onward rail and river connections to the wider network.

    The core network will be supported by a comprehensive network of routes that feed into it, nationally and regionally. It will be based on EU-wide common standards so that trains, ships, planes, trucks and cars can use infrastructure safely and with no technical problems.

    Together, the two layers will provide passengers with safer and less congested travel as well as smoother and quicker journeys. By 2050, the large majority of Europe's citizens and businesses should be no more than 30 minutes' travel time from the comprehensive network. Apart from smoother and quicker journeys, it will provide safer and less congested travel.

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    10 passenger rights however you travel

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    10 passenger rights however you travel

    Europe's success in securing and upholding
    passenger rights
    is one of the resounding achievements of transport policy. The EU is now the first, and only, region in the world where passengers have guaranteed rights across all forms of transport when something goes wrong with their trip.

    Thanks to this EU legislation, passengers now have certain entitlements when it comes to information about a journey, reservation, ticket fare, damage to baggage - or for the event of accidents, delays and cancellations, denied boarding, or difficulties with package holidays.

    Criteria and conditions are set for possible compensation, re-routing or ticket reimbursement, and assistance – including meals, and accommodation if necessary. The priority is to get travellers to where they want to go – and back home again.

    EU passenger rights are adapted to each means of transport. There are some differences that relate, for example, to national exemptions or the amount and basis of compensation. But in essence, the rights that apply to all types of transport are comparable.

    They are based on three key principles: non-discrimination; accurate, timely and accessible information; immediate and proportionate assistance. These principles are the foundation for ten basic rights that form the core of EU passenger rights policy.

    Disabled passengers and those with restricted mobility
    - for example, if they are elderly or travelling with infants - have specific rights as well, since the policy objective is to allow them to have the same possibilities to travel as other citizens. So their reservations cannot be denied, nor can transport be refused to them unless this is required for safety reasons or if the design of the means of transport in question does not properly accommodate them.

    When something goes wrong with a journey and the passenger feels that his or her rights have not been respected, the first thing to do is to contact the transport company. If there is no satisfaction, a complaint may also be filed with a national enforcement authority.

    The European Commission has released a
    free smartphone application
    so that passengers can have all information about their rights at hand. The app works offline, explains clearly and concisely what the rights are, and how to complain. It is available for all Apple, Android and Windows mobile devices in 25 languages.

    • Consult this web pages for more information on Passenger Rights legislation in force and for the list of National Enforcement Bodies by mode of transport
    • Discover all the Passenger Rights campaign visuals : videos, posters, and leaflets

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