The objective of the TACIS project (TNREG 9703) was to promote the facilitation of trade and the movement of people between the EU/CEEC and the NIS by development of the infrastructure, equipment and services on the Pan European Transport Network Corridors II & IX. Countries involved in this 3-year project are Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine. This project encompassed many activities such as formulate and help the recipient to implement an immediate action plan containing activities that are most urgently needed particularly those requiring technical assistance. Recommendations in the IT sector concerning the improvement of traffic flow on TEN corridors II and IX are made. The improvement of the traffic flows must cope with two contradictory objectives: on one hand, the objective of speeding up the transports means (road and rail) in every situation and on the other hand, the objective of safety and security of persons and goods that necessitates the implementation of control mechanisms. IT has the capacity to reconcile these two objectives by allowing a better management of the existing bottlenecks while making more reliable and less time-consuming the control activities. Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) offer the possibility to develop marketable services to users and may attract investment from private sources: ITS is considered a likely ground for the development of public private partnerships. ITS services need an efficient telecommunication infrastructure since transport users require access to services anywhere and at any time. The costs for implementing such an infrastructure are generally considered too high by transport operators. There is therefore an opportunity to attract telecommunications operators and share the investment costs. It is important that the concerned groups study together the most cost effective solution to build the telecommunications backbone on which ITS services will be plugged in. This plan should certainly be built at the national level, but should be interoperable with neighbouring countries. In addition, this development cannot be made without looking at Western Europe and taking into consideration standards solutions that have been already developed in order to facilitate future integration. A suitable mechanism should be put in place to facilitate cohesion without hindering local initiatives. For the covering abstract see ITRD E124693.
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