Until recently, borders between member states of the European Union were an absolute barrier, not only in terms of culture and language, but also in terms of transport planning and marketing. With increasing European integration borders are losing their importance and their separating effect, particularly where a major city in one country has a catchment area in another (e.g. Strasbourg and the Ortenau district in Germany). Consequently, cross-border car usage is rapidly increasing, whereas ridership on public transport stagnates. Generally, little has been done so far to assist the improvement of cross-border connections in public transport whether at national or supra-national level. The CONPASS project aimed to provide support in this field. The project dealt with experience-based strategies to improve cross-border local and regional public transport in urbanised areas. CONPASS was a 2.5 year research project (2000-2002) co-financed by the EU under the 5th Framework RTD Programme and comprised 22 partners from 9 countries, thus providing a wide European coverage. A major contribution of the project is a comprehensive insight into the nature of existing border barriers throughout Europe as well as providing the necessary tools on how to overcome these barriers. In this paper, selected recommendations addressed to practitioners at site level as well as to policy makers at national or European level are featured. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.
Abstract