Main transport challenges in South Eastern Europe, after enlargement

This paper looks at the main challenges that are facing the Transport sector in the countries of S. E. Europe after enlargement. First, it looks at the challenge of setting a common Transport policy and points as priority areas the questions of: frontier crossings, road transport quotas, working hours (road transport), restructuring of railways, promotion of Rail Freight ‘Freeways’, new financing schemes through Public Private Partnerships, and other issues. Then it looks at the factors that will determine the future transport outlook of the area in both qualitative and quantitative terms and it finds that there is a web of factors and issues that will play a role, such as for example the socio-political climate and preferences, the advent of New Technologies, and the degree of development of the Trans-European Networks. The paper looks at the ‘challenges’ facing the inter-urban and urban transport separately. As regards the first it concludes that a) higher integration of the transport provider into the whole transport and logistics chain, and b) closer co-operation and ‘integration’ with the customer, will be the main ones, while for urban transport the main challenge will be improvement of urban traffic management systems and, inevitably, demand management measures, as well as implementation and operation of a whole new series of technologies and systems of urban ICT that will form the Integrated Urban ICT environment of the future.