EMERET - Enhancing MEditerranean REgional Transport
Overview
Background & policy context:
The countries of the Mediterranean area, North Africa and the Middle East have a historic, cultural and natural patrimony constituting an extraordinary tourist attraction and, therefore, potential source of economic development. However, the inadequacy of some parts of the transport system is a stumbling block.
The EMERET project aimed at improving, in the direction of a greater sustainability and interoperability, the efficiency and effectiveness of the transport systems of the tourist areas of the Mediterranean countries, by transferring to those contexts transport measures successfully implemented in European cities.
Objectives:
Specific objectives of the EMERET project were:
- to verify the transferability of innovative measures and methodologies experimented within the European cities in significantly different contexts, such as those of the third countries of the Mediterranean;
- to define a pilot project in the city of Bethlehem, on the bases of the above-mentioned experiences and a detailed analysis of the local problems;
- to identify a network of Mediterranean cities of particular interest for tourism in European and third countries.
An important objective of the EMERET project was, by forming a network, to lay the groundwork for the creation of a consortium of collaborating MED and EU cities. This consortium would thus already be in place for subsequent EC actions (“shared cost”) aimed at the diffusion in the third countries of both decision support systems for planning and evaluation models of the results of the transport-related measures on the socio-economic activities and on the environment. In other words, the EMERET network represents a significant head start on future initiatives.
Methodology:
The activities carried out during the project can be divided into two groups.
1) Analysis of the problems of the Bethlehem transport system and definition of the pilot projects.
The first step towards the definition of the pilot projects was the analysis of the transport problems in Bethlehem. On the basis of this analysis the following objectives were identified:
- to rationalise use of the space between motorised modes, public transport and pedestrians;
- to improve safety;
- to reduce traffic nuisance in sensitive areas.
The next step was to identify the best measures, among those successfully implemented in the framework of the European Commission transport research programme, for pursuing the above-mentioned objectives. The result of these activities was the identification of the following possible interventions, subjects of the three pilot projects to be implemented in the city of Bethlehem:
- reorganisation of the public transport system, at present completely fragmented, utilising the new bus station as interchange and integration node;
- reorganisation of the parking system, with fees charged in some commercial streets;
- pedestrianisation of some streets of tourist interest.
For each pilot project a selection of possible sites was made. On the basis of the collected information, different alternatives were compared to identify the best solution.
Accompanying measures were then defined to increase the effectiveness of the proposed measures.
Unfortunately, the situation of violent conflict in Palestine, and specifically in Bethlehem, has impeded the development of the planned pilot project activities.
2) Creation of the network of cities and benchmarking of their transport systems.
One specific objective of EMERET was to verify the transferability of the innovative measures and methodologies experimented with in European cities in significantly different contexts, such as those of the third countries of the Mediterranean.
In line with this objective, a benchmarking exercise was carried out in order to:
- assess the present condition of the transport systems;
- identify possibilities for improvement;
- identify how to obtain improvements.
A peculiar aspect of this benchmarki
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