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Infrastructure development is to enhance competitiveness
The issue of infrastructure growth, upgrading and interconnection has an important place in the CENTROPE political co-operation agenda. The pilot activity Infrastructure Needs Assessment Tool (INAT) is aimed at the concrete goals to be achieved, in order to support cross-border mobility and further connect CENTROPE to Europe.
Day trips by bus or train to Győr, Mikulov or Neusiedl am See or a visit to Trnava’s churches… For too many CENTROPE citizens, such leisure-time plans are still difficult to follow through due to inadequate public transport facilities. The significance of this challenge is further exacerbated by the very dynamic growth of interregional transport over the last few years and its implications for cross-border labour mobility and the region’s competitiveness.
In this context, the INAT pilot activity strives to analyse challenges and bottlenecks in the region and to formulate a precise co-operation agenda for CENTROPE. The “CENTROPE in motion” symposium on 11 October 2011 further advanced these efforts. In the words of the experts, the existing infrastructure in CENTROPE is lagging behind when confronted with the ever-growing intensity of traffic. Even the region’s main traffic links still do not meet all qualitative and quantitative parameters to function smoothly. Another problem lies in the lack of infrastructure or its low quality in the more peripheral parts of CENTROPE.
To overcome these drawbacks, priority projects that will help to adapt the region’s infrastructure to the actual needs must be identified in the first place. INAT will name these priority projects, mostly aiming at CENTROPE’s high-level traffic nodes and cross-border connections. Furthermore, the compatibility of cross-border public transport systems and the improvement of their services must be addressed as well. This should ultimately result in a CENTROPE-wide transport association and a multimodal information system.
Finally, the proposals of the INAT expert consortium directly feed into the formulation of a common Transport and Infrastructure Strategy for CENTROPE. In this regard, the political leaders of the region agreed at the CENTROPE Summit in Tomášov to intensify their efforts to improve the infrastructure in CENTROPE and work towards the adoption of this common strategy within a year.
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