Integrative Approach to Transport Corridors and Transport Nodes Development

In its 2050 long-term strategy and the European Green Deal, the European Commission calls for a climate-neutral Europe by 2050 and shows how Europe can achieve climate neutrality by investing in technological solutions, empowering citizens and coordinating action on key policies. Tackling climate issues requires a change in the development paradigm and the immediate implementation of action, especially in the most stressed areas and sectors. This certainly includes transport, where sustainable mobility must be at the forefront. This requires moving beyond past piecemeal approaches and establishing coordinated action by decision-makers at all spatial levels, while ensuring greater policy coherence, better governance and better financing. Effective governance models need to be developed that coordinate different policies, integrate sustainable mobility actions into strategic documents at different spatial levels and ensure that different policies, sectors and levels of governance work together.

Effective governance also requires the involvement of citizens and stakeholders to adapt policies to their needs and to contribute to behavioural change. In order to support Slovenia's efforts to achieve its climate goals, the project aims to strengthen integrated planning along transport corridors in Slovenia and to identify areas that, in terms of their existing amenities, needs for additional urban development and the efficiency of public transport, make sense to develop as important transport, service, settlement areas with a high quality living environment. Furthermore, the project aims to demonstrate in a pilot area a set of possible measures for sustainable mobility development, including proposals for measures for more efficient public passenger transport, urban planning and development solutions that would reduce the need for mobility and enhance active forms of mobility, a governance model at local level integrating spatial and transport planning, and to test different management, planning and technological solutions to enhance sustainable mobility in the corridor and in the hinterland linking the corridor to the transport corridor/interchange.

The objectives were achieved in several steps. First, starting from the concept of transit-oriented development (TOD) and the station area concept from the SMART-MR project, we explained the theoretical aspect of TOD and how station areas can be understood and developed. We have defined station areas on the basis of five criteria, namely adequate frequency of public transport, the central functions performed by each settlement for its hinterland, jobs or the volume of commuter mobility, positive demographic projections and location along a railway line. For each criterion, one point was assigned to a potential station area, and station areas meeting at least three criteria were included in the selection of station areas. We further defined station areas as primary (4 or 5 points) or secondary (3 points) and developed a typology of station areas according to the actual use of parts of the buildings. We have thus defined five types of station areas: multifunctional, balanced, service, industrial and residential station areas. Corridor definition followed, defining primary and secondary corridors. The primary corridors are those with adequate public transport quality along the railways, connecting station areas with a value of 4 and 5. The secondary corridors are those connecting station areas with a value of 3 and all bus corridors. Corridors have also been described in terms of time competitiveness with private cars at peak times. 
To test the feasibility of creating a station area in practice, we looked in detail at the case of Grosuplje. Grosuplje is located in close proximity to Ljubljana and has a large commuting population, but the number of jobs in Grosuplje has also increased in recent years, making it a strong employment hub for surrounding municipalities. We have focused on spatial, economic, transport and social aspects, producing a number of socio-economic analyses, and we have also placed a strong emphasis on the use of geographic information systems. In order to better understand mobility habits, an online survey was carried out at the level of the station area (Brvace, Brezje pri Grosuplje and Grosuplje) and at the level of the other settlements in the municipality. Unfortunately, the second part of the participatory process was limited to individual meetings with municipal representatives, and we did not carry out a wider participatory process due to the municipality's reticence.

In the final part of the process, we prepared various guidelines, namely for Grosuplje, for the national level, for the development of corridors, for the development of station areas, for the preparation of strategic documents at the regional level, for the linking of spatial and transport planning in the development of station areas, and for the linking of hinterland to station areas. In particular, we have prepared detailed guidance for strategy papers at regional level, including an overview of the results of the analytical work by region. 

The second part of the project was to prototype an advanced MaaS (Mobility as a Service) concept that includes private vehicles alongside public transport and active mobility and new mobility services, in a modern and data-driven way. We have identified the stakeholders in the MaaS concept, the financial mechanisms related to MaaS, the MaaS architectural design and the MaaS business model, and finally we have prototyped the application and defined the next steps for its deployment in practice. The results of this work are presented in Final report Part 2 and Part 3.