Financial Sustainability of Public Transport & the European White Paper: Goals. Measures & Resources.

In co-operation with the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) and the Tallinn Bus Company, the Municipality of Tallinn organised a public transport related conference in Tallinn, on 30 May 2012, titled “Financial Sustainability of Public Transport & The European White Paper: Goals, Measures and Resources”.

Public transport plays an important role in the organisation of daily operations in our cities. This is confirmed by an extensive treatment of public transport in the legislative documents of the European Union, as well as the EU’s comprehensive policy in the field of public transport. The European Commission has adopted the strategic document WHITE PAPER 2011 (Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area – Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system), which sets out a number of specific and ambitious tasks for the transport sector in forthcoming decades. This also requires that the EU’s public transport sector must state its intentions clearly, based on the experiences of public transport specialists and day-to-day organisers. As the economic depression has also had a strong impact on the entire Baltic region, our common position and vision for the future are especially important.

Public transport is facing challenges, and in order to deal with these challenges joint efforts are required from many stakeholders, including efforts by public transport authorities, operators, as well as by decision makers in cities and political circles in every country and also on an EU level. We want to take into account the importance of finding necessary solutions for organising public transport successfully, whilst bearing in mind the processes taking place in our economies and the possible effects these might have on the sustainable financing of public transport. With this in mind, we asked the European Commission, UITP, as well as representatives from cities with successful public transport organisation, to participate in the conference in order to discuss public transport financing.

The conference’s agenda, together with the list of speakers and the presentations can be found on the conference’s official website http://www.tallinn2012conference.eu/index.html

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