PA Transport of the EUSBSR calls for coordination of national transport policies and actions to ensure a harmonised transnational development of the transport system. The ensured thematic focus and established links between the above initiatives helped achieve certain stage of coordination and complementarity. However, fuller integration of the approaches, which would enable better development and alignment of transport policies at various governance tiers, faces a number of challenges.

The project objective is to demonstrate how multi-level governance models, tools and approaches can contribute to a better alignment of transport policies in the BSR at various administrative levels and better incorporation of the business perspective. This is expected to increase commitment of public and private stakeholders to achieving greener and more efficient transport in the Baltic Sea Region, in line with PA 11 of the EU Baltic Sea Strategy.

The project will place particular focus on developing and testing joint planning and implementation frameworks for transport policies at such reference scales, which have witnessed a long process of cooperation across the national borders with involvement of public/private stakeholders, and/or which have gathered a vast evidence for MLG actions.

These are: MACRO (overall BSR area), MESO (cross-border integration areas), CORRIDOR (transnational multimodal transport corridors) and MICRO (intermodal terminals).

In specific real conditions at those reference scales the project will run a few demonstration showcases. Through the so called stakeholder management process the project will engage relevant public and private actors to jointly develop:

• Sustainable implementation and management frameworks for macroregional and cross-border strategies, programmes and action plans (WP3) – and test them on the case how to streamline the results of the BTO and TransBaltic, and use them in the national and regional transport planning processes (MACRO) and how to secure durability of joint strategic transport processes in the Öresund region and Helsinki-Tallinn area (MESO).
• MLG models for the planning and operation stages of intermodal terminals (WP4) – and test them on five differentiated cases in the BSR (MICRO).
• Operational MLG model for better freight management in a transnational transport connecting EU with non-EU countries (WP5) – and test them on the case of the East West Transport Corridor (CORRIDOR).
• Operational MLG model supporting the transformation of a multimodal transport corridor into a regional development axis (WP6) – and test them on the case of the Scandria Corridor (CORRIDOR).

The project has a strong triple-helix partnership from all BSR EU Member States and all vertical governance levels. It is supported by PA Transport Coordinators, national transport ministries and several other actors, which will be engaged as reference partners.