Download: TransBaltic Newsletter No. 10

In this issue –

• Dry Ports best-practice – Sascha Westermann, Hamburg Port Authority, reports from a TransBaltic study trip to Australia discussing dry ports and measures on how to control approaching port traffic with authorities and operators in the continent’s three major cities.
  
• Making the BSR a well-tuned model region – Which public policy measures, supporting pre-requisites or weak component should be paid special attention to achieve a future green BSR? TransBaltic 2nd project conference “A model region for green transport solutions” 11-12 May invited for interactive discussions on the topic and more, read about what was said at the conference in Skellefteå.

The cross-project collaboration continues and the 2nd seminar back-to-back with the Rail Baltic Growth kick-off conference once again brought together TransBaltic, East West Transport Corridor II, Scandria, North-East Cargo Link II, Rail Baltica Growth Corridor and Bothnian Green Logistics Corridor projects to discuss and present latest results in the context of green multimodal transport corridors.

Mikael Nyberg, deputy director general at the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications, opened the meeting by introducing an outlook of the Finnish transport policy that has to respond to the needs of green transport and improved long-term planning.

A common understanding of the green corridor concept seems to be getting closer to the finishing line. Mathias Roos – the EWTC II project manager – announced the project’s intention to complete a list of key performance indicators by the beginning of autumn. The set of KPI’s, rendered available for testing to the allied projects, will make it possible to compare and develop green corridors in a systematic manner.

The meeting opened up a possibility of efficient streamlining of activities between the allied projects on one hand and two important pan-Baltic transport development processes on the other, namely: the Baltic Transport Outlook (BTO) and the Northern Dimension Partnership for Transport and Logistics (NDPTL). The BTO consortium welcomed the participating projects for an exclusive consultation session to review the draft final report of the study. In turn, the NDPTL Secretariat accepted an invitation to attend umbrella meetings on a permanent basis for information exchange and mutual inspiration.

Furthermore, the allied projects agreed to address the European Commission with recommendations on how to use the green transport corridors experience in exploring the core network corridor notion in the TEN-T planning work.

TransBaltic aspires to expand the group of collaborating projects at the next umbrella meeting scheduled in early September, to cover the corridor projects newly approved by the BSR Programme authorities as well as ongoing projects dealing with environmental effects of maritime shipping.

Located by the Elblag River in close range to the Vistula Lagoon is the Polish port of Elblag, the first municipally-owned sea port in Poland. The heritage of the port is complex, connected to both Prussian, German and Polish history. Entering the Lagoon from the Baltic Sea requires a passage through the strait on Russian territorial waters, which implies complicated administrative procedures. In addition, the passage through the strait is restricted barely for the vessels under the Russian and Polish flag, with no access allowed for other EU countries.

This very unique situation of an EU port confronted with access limitations for incoming and outgoing ships is reflected in its economic standings. The port of Elblag is in need for vast investments to improve the hinterland and seaward connections, the latter to be possibly facilitated through constructing a direct canal through the Vistula Spit to avoid entering the Russia’s territorial waters.

The city of Elblag hosted TransBaltic and Baltic Ports Organization’s third joint seminar, this time with a focus on the development perspectives for small and medium sized Baltic Sea ports. Such ports face several challenges, like inadequate hinterland connections, unbalance in an export/import pattern, stringent environmental regulations, complicated management and ownership structures and last but not least – the strong competition. The different constitutions of ownership and management are visible throughout Europe but the dominating model in the Baltic Sea area is that the port is owned by the state, municipality or region. A growing trend in Sweden of the ownership being taken over by private stakeholders enables the competing ports to establish cooperation ties and find own niches. Crucial for the small and medium sized ports is to have an anchoring among the local industry and acceptance from the local society. Attracting larger cargo volumes necessitates also collaboration with terminals and dry ports, which in turn may secure investments in its road and rail hinterland infrastructure.

Discussion at the EU level is to large extent overlooking the development prospects of small and medium size ports. Transnational projects like TransBaltic can in that respect serve as a tool for highlighting interests of this particular segment of the maritime economy and assist in formulating common views on how the cargo flows should be handled in order to diminish risk for competing interests.

A report summarising the seminar is currently under preparation and will be published on the TransBaltic website in August.

A joint resolution was adopted when representatives from TransBaltic’s partner regions gathered May 11 in connection to the conference in Skellefteå/Sweden for a politic oriented pre-meeting to agree on the direction of its further work.

We are with that supported in our aspiration to contribute to the implementation of the EU Baltic Sea Strategy with emphasis on the development of green transports solutions and the green corridor concept. The resolution also acknowledges our important role as platform for public and private sector to meet and to facilitate collaboration with and between other projects in this context. Finally the partner regions stress the importance of their active involvement in the TransBaltic transport action plan to be developed next year for a joint standpoint to complete the transport harmonisation actions by the national governments.

Download the resolution here: TransBaltic Conference 2011 – Joint resolution

Download: TransBaltic Newsletter No. 9

In this issue:

• Emerging business opportunities - India, along with China, is one of the fastest growing economies in the world today. The European Union is the country’s largest trading partner, accounting for more than 25% of India’s total exports and 21% of its total imports as of 2009. A TransBaltic delegation spent five days in India to learn more about the country’s transport systems and future plans regarding its trade with Europe and the Baltic Sea region in particular.
• Future environmental regulations for shipping in the BSR – TransBaltic and Baltic Ports Organization recently launched a report on the topic. Get to know more about the complex issue, which causes great challenge for both the shipping industry and the ports, in an interview with the co-author – BPO’s Secretary General Bogdan Ołdakowski, TransBaltic task 4.1 leader. The report can be downloaded from our website under “Reports & Material”

The shipping industry is one of the main contributors to the bad environmental situation within the Baltic Sea. The negative influence of Baltic maritime traffic on the environment is connected mainly with: SOx and NOx emissions, wastewater dumped into the sea, the spread of alien species which are carried in a ship’s ballast waters. However, there are several steps being undertaken to make sea transport more environmentally friendly and to reduce its disadvantageous influence on the Baltic Sea’s ecosystem. The new environmental regulations are a great challenge not only for the shipping industry but also for ports.

The report identifies the main environmental priorities of Baltic Ports according to ESPO/EcoPorts survey and deals further with the future environmental regulations for shipping and points out the most significant consequences for the Baltic ports.

Download the report here.

Download: TransBaltic Newsletter No 8, Feb 2011

In this Issue –

• Find an extensive interview with task 4.3 leader – Urszula Kowalczyk, Head of the Economics and Law Department of the Maritime Institute in Gdansk, responsible for the recently launched study report “Implications of the EU transport policy on development of sustainable transport in the Baltic Sea Region”. Get to know more about the report and Ms Kowalczyk’s thoughts about policies and green corridors in “A vision to be brought to life”.
• 2011 has had an exciting start! Update yourself on the exciting activities TransBaltic has been occupied with lately and what we are planning for in the close future.

Region Skåne and TransBaltic hosted one of the workshops at the 3rd Interreg Forum  in Stockholm. The workshop named “Infrastructure planninga and accessibility” gathered around 50 participants interested in the concept of green corridors and its impact on the accessibility and territorial cohesion of the Baltic Sea Region.

It featured a presentation of transnational Interreg projects active in transport-related matters and their joint work to make the green corridor concept proposed by the European Commission more customised to specific development conditions of the Baltic Sea Region.

‘It is time for Green Corridors 3.0’ – said Jerker Sjögren, representative of the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications, country’s coordinator of the green corridors. He expressed words of acknowledgment for the ambitions of TransBaltic, EWTC II, Scandria, NECL II and other projects that created so called umbrella cooperation and underlined a need to better exploit their implementation results in the transport planning work at the national level.

The panellists, comprising the European Commission (DG REGIO), the Swedish Ministry and the featured projects, were anonymous to see more flexible solutions in the future Cohesion Policy. These should allow for stronger territorial dimension of transnational programmes (to respond to specific development needs) and more efficient inclusion of private stakeholders in the project implementation. The current projects shall be thus instrumental in supplying good evidence for the new placed-based Cohesion Policy. In pursuing the green corridor concept, they should do their utmost to build durable structures for public-private alliances (associations, cooperation platforms) and secure that both environmental and business benefits stemming from the concept are visible. Such evidence will be helpful also in the implementation of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region as it will increase understanding between various sectors and create a win-win situation.

Panel f.l: Anders Lindholm -DG Regio, Virpi Heikkinen -NECL II, Gesa Köhler -Scandria, Evelina Malm -Region Skåne, Mathias Roos -EWTC II, Sara Rahm -TransBaltic, Magnus Oldenburg -Swe.Ministry, Jerker Sjögren -Swe.Ministry