Overview
Against the background of doubling freight transport volumes by 2050 in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR), capable transport infrastructures are required for efficient, integrated and sustainable freight and passenger traffic. The Scandinavian-Adriatic Development Corridor is the shortest geographical link between Baltic and Adriatic Sea.
It provides freight transport capacities to relieve overloaded Western European Transport Axes and accelerates cohesion between Western and Eastern Europe. Political representatives of Scandinavian and German regions and metropolises underlined their intentions by the Berlin Declaration (2007), the COINCO-Charter (2008) and the Scandria Berlin Declaration (2011). Consequently, the transnational cooperation projects South-North-Axis (SoNorA) in CENTRAL and Scandinavian-Adriatic Corridor for Growth and Innovation (Scandria) in the BSR foster the idea of the Scandinavian-Adriatic Development Corridor.
The Scandria partnership comprises 19 partners from five countries: Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Germany and represents an effective mixture of actors from national, regional and local administrations, key logistic actors as well as knowledge and innovation institutions. Scandria is committed to the ideas of a “Green” Corridor of innovation and sustainable growth.
Its main objectives are:
- To increase the infrastructural efficiency for passengers and freight.
- To improve the accessibility of regional economic potentials by activating new value-added chains and innovative, process-optimised logistic solutions.
- To build a network of political and economic stakeholders for the corridor’s development.
These goals are reflected in the three main thematic pillars:
- QUALITY OF TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURES to solve transport bottlenecks and improve co-modal transport, to test Intelligent Transport Solutions and to foster clean fuels for reducing.
- INNOVATIVE LOGISTIC SOLUTIONS to elaborate several business cases like multimodal block trains, new ferry connections or new logistic concepts accompanied by a marketing campaign. Main outcome will be a “Logistic Business Development Strategies”.
- STRATEGY OF CORRIDOR FUNCTIONALITY to network economic, scientific and political stakeholders and to define development scenarios and targets.
Main outcome is the “Action Programme on the Development of the Scandria Corridor” defining a corridor vision for 2030 and proposing concrete actions to realise this vision. Moreover, Scandria contributed by a number of results to European and Baltic Sea Region Development, e.g. by its Green Corridor Strategy or its TEN-T position paper. Providing the link to Central and Alpine Space, Scandria fosters cross-fertilization with related projects in those cooperation areas as well as in the BSR or further European networks (e.g. METREX).
Funding
Results
Main outcome of Scandria is the ACTION PROGRAM ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCANDRIA CORRIDOR from the Baltic to the Adriatic Sea.
It defines three target-areas:
- Smart, green and inclusive innovation and growth,
- a modern, competitive and sustainable transport system
- a corridor of cooperation. The partners suggest more than a dozen actions to implement this vision. They underline the intension to set-up a multilevel, cross-sector governance platform, the Scandria Alliance.
The project elaborated FURTHER STRATEGIC OUTCOMES including:
- the Scandria investment strategy; defining investment priorities with focus to intermodal, rail and HGV infrastructure.
- the Logistics Business Development Strategy; suggesting six strategic goals and a number of concrete actions to make logistics services more competitive.
- the Green Corridor Strategy; developing directions for reducing CO2-emissions along the corridor.
Besides strategic results, the partners developed VERY CONCRETE BUSINESS CASES that partly are implemented, like:
- business concepts for enhanced block train operations. These bundle goods aiming to shift them from road to rail. One block train Rostock - Vienna supported by Scandria got aid of the Marco Polo programme, the Green Line Concept developed by Öresund region is currently applied in Marco Polo.
- fostering of the MoS-concept of the European Union.
Supported by Scandria, two MoS projects were established:
Rostock-Gedser and Rostock/Travemünde -Trelleborg that induce additional investment of 210 million Euro for increasing capacity and improving environmental performance of ferry services.
- the preparation of a Scandria biogas corridor, enabling road based freight transport to run on alternative fuels, thus reducing CO2-emissions drastically
The Scandria partnership succeeded in INVOLVING AND COMMITTING POLICY STAKEHOLDERS FROM EU AND NATIONAL LEVEL.
The Scandria partnership addressed relevant policy stakeholders directly by
- own papers concerning e.g. TEN-T-policy,
- statements at during the TEN-T stakeholder consultations by own interventions at TEN-T Days and
- organising policy events in the corridor as well as in Brussels.
This joint engagement was much acknowledged by the European Commission as well as national politicians. Scandria proved also successful in INVOLVING THE BUSINESS SECTOR. A number of ferry lines, rail operators and logistics service providers got addressed at events dedicated to business stakeholders as well as during business fairs with Scandria participation (e.g. transport logistics 2011 Munich).
National policy makers as well as major business players will have to be further addressed in future to get stronger commitment. This is fostered by a multilevel governance approach, currently developed in the Trans Governance project and a future task of the Scandria Alliance.