Green Corridor Development Plan – Solutions are available to boost greening of transport in Europe

We have asked a couple of questions to Stefan Breitenbach, Port of Hamburg Marketing, to learn more about the Green Corridor Development Plan in the Swiftly Green project. 

What is a Green Corridor Development Plan? 

“The Green Corridor Development Plan, which was developed in the framework of the SWIFTLY Green project, shall contribute to discussion and real actions on greening the transport sector and especially the TEN-T Core Network Corridors. It contains examples of concrete measures and actions as well as recommendations to boost greening of the transport sector. The examples are based on measures presented in the Swiftly Green Corridor Portal, www.greencorridorportal.eu which, by the way, I highly recommend to look into.”

What’s unique with the Corridor Development Plan? 

“For the first time a project identified and analysed existing measures developed in the variety of previous funding programmes and projects, which contribute to the greening objectives, and European goals set. The identified measures were assessed in respect to their greening effect, marketability and transferability (corridor scope) “

“By having taken conditional aspects into consideration, like noise and greenhouse gas emissions, air pollutants as well as technical readiness level of the identified measures, we ensure high practicability and efficiency. “

“The most promising measures according to our analyses have been included in the Swiftly Green Corridor Portal and the Green Corridor Development Plan - to guide stakeholder in choosing suitable measures according to their individual challenges. Swiftly Green considers and accepts the heterogeneity of the European corridors (sometimes even corridor stretches), resulting mostly in no “one-size-fits-all” solutions. Instead we provide the framework and it is up to the stakeholders to choose out of the total amount of measures best possible fitting and functioning once to meet their specific needs and challenges. “

Is the plan finished or can it be developed further? 

”Thus, the Green Corridor Development Plan sets the course and demonstrates available solutions for a more environmental friendly transport system – in this respect I consider it being complete and finalised. However, there is still some work to do, as e.g. no targets to reach environmental goals (like air quality and noise) on a corridor perspective are set yet. Neither binding KPIs nor the corresponding data to validate the progress in reaching the goals is given. Thus, it is a difficult task to promote measures that can fulfil the non-existing targets for a future sustainable corridor development. A governance structure needs to be set up entitled to agree upon aims, targets and KPIs by involving the heterogeneity of stakeholders and their requirements on a functional infrastructure and transport services. Indeed very high ambitions but urgently needed if the transport sector should transform. ”

The Swiftly Green project is now ending, how do you feel about the work with the 

plan?

“I’m convinced that we did a very good job and it was privilege to work together with all the partners, having had very fruitful discussions, inspiring exchange of opinions as well as experience. I hope to have roused peoples’ curiosity: read our Development Plan and have a look at the Swiftly Green Corridor Portal to find suitable measures to deal with your specific greening challenges.”

“Solutions are available – just pick them up!”