New Year wishes

from Baltic Loop

team

to everybody!

Field survey in Finland to determine the Road E-18 delays and bottlenecks

Project noticed by CPMRBaltic Sea Commission

Project contribution – 51 ideas for transportdevelopment in Latvia

How to solve problems that hinder the fullorganization of traffic flow? 17 interviews

Baltic Loop in Swedish Press

A published paper in Network IndustriesQuarterly

BALTIC LOOPPROJECT

N E W S L E T T E R # 5 • D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0  

IN THIS ISSUE

LATEST NEWS

The Finnish partners, who are also the project’sLead partner, have chosen to use a researchmethod to validate the results, which wouldallow them to ascertain the conclusionsexpressed and summarized after interviewswith stakeholders.

A field study was done to do the traffic flow testand this was done by organizing a long vehicletour. The trips took place in September 2020,traveling the same route three times to obtainobjective data.

The truck drive started from the Turku port andstopped at Vaalimaa border control stationbetween Finland and Russia and returned backto Turku port on the following day. The wholetour timing was planned to imitate real drivingsituation after the ferry has arrived to port ofTurku.

The Baltic Sea Commission is aninternational, independent organisation ofRegional Authorities at subnational level inthe Baltic Sea region. We are honored forthe interest about shown by themregarding the Baltic Loop project. Tworepresentatives of the partnership – projectmanager Irina Wahlström at Åbo Akademiand project manager Ahmed Alaeddine atRegion Örebro County were questionedand you can read the interview in theCPMR Baltic Sea Commission Newsflash(October 2020).

PROJECT NOTICED BY CPMRBALTIC SEA COMMISSION

FIELD SURVEY IN FINLAND TO DETERMINE THE ROAD E-18 DELAYS AND BOTTLENECKS

READ ABOUT KEY FINDINGS ANDRECOMMENDATIONS HERE

The planning and implementation of well-functioningtraffic/transport systems is a complex andmultilayered process covering many measures andelimination of transport hindrances and bottlenecks.It affects many actors and sectors (users, planners,authorities and administrations) of the society on alllevels.

READ MORE HERE

Irina Wahlström, Baltic Loop project manager

Åbo Akademi (Finland)

As part of the project, the Riga Planning Region organized a series of seminars-workshops “Cooperation Dialogues in the Transport Sector” with the aim of improvingcooperation between different parties in the region to achieve better end results andfind solutions to reduce travel time in the corridor. The final online meeting on 9December discussed the results, which will allow the report to be finalized.

PROJECT CONTRIBUTION – 51 IDEAS FORTRANSPORT DEVELOPMENT IN LATVIA

READ MORE HERE

During the workshopsstakeholders identified:

weak sides

threats

options

ideas and solutions

HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS THAT HINDER THE FULLORGANIZATION OF TRAFFIC FLOW? SUMMARY OF 17 INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED IN LATVIAIn order to fully understand the situation, in-depth interviews with stakeholders in thedevelopment of the tourism and transport corridor were conducted during the study onthe development of the Tourism and Transport Corridor Development Vision 2030 onthe Via Hanseatica, which is a section of the Baltic Loop Southern Transport Corridor.

THE TALKS PROVIDED VALUABLE OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS, OFTENINCLUDING SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS THAT HINDER THEPROPER ORGANIZATION OF TRAFFIC FLOW, SUCH AS:

Prioritizing of investments is a challenge. What are the priorities in post-Covid-19 period?Should we invest more in freight? In public transport? And if yes in what kind of publictransport? For tourism or transport corridors the question is similar – do we invest in betterroads or in better railways? In case of VIA Hanseatica it is not part of any cornet web orcorridor, it will be very difficult to convince that investment in this corridor is of highimportance for national decision makers. Making new corridors or connecting to the existingcorridors?

Liene GaujenieteSpatial Planning Expert,VASAB (Visions & strategiesaround the Baltic sea)

The Polish experience has shown that building faster roads andthinking less about exits has broken down areas that affect localpeople, businesses – the faster the connections, the moreadvantageous the larger centers and the less advantageous theplaces in the middle.

Ivo OšenieksPresident of the LatvianPassenger Carriers Association

At present, tourists who have come to Latvia often have to evaluate theinformation, not with which it would be more convenient to get to thedestination, but how and whether it is possible to get there by publictransport. There is no flexible system to change routes quickly. I considerthe decision-making process to be very long, and the route network ismanaged centrally from Riga.

Lotārs DravantsHead of PassengerTransport Service, CATA Corp.

Public transport runs on specific roads and at specific times – it aims to meet the needs of thepopulation, so the needs of tourists are secondary and adaptable. The A2 and A3 roads are ingood condition, but the number of users is growing, they are congested, and congestion isoccurring in particularly good weather conditions, which means that there is insufficient roadcapacity. Paved roads need to be improved; asphalt roads need more capacity. There arebureaucratic constraints on flexible route planning. Multimodal connections and transferpoints are needed – improvements are needed to run fewer buses with more passengers thanhalf-empty buses.

Wiktor Szydarowski, PhDDirector of ESPON EGTC, transport policy expert

READ MORE HERE

BALTIC LOOP IN SWEDISH PRESSThe newspaper Dagens Industri (Sweden) haswritten an article about the Baltic Loop project.Dagens Industri interviewed the Swedish projectmanager Ahmed Alaeddine who talks about theproject and how the project has identifiedbottlenecks in the transport system and how itenables increased cooperation, betterinfrastructure planning and increasedsustainability in the Baltic Sea area.

“The project started in 2019 and will run until 2021, butalready now we have been able to identify certainbottlenecks such as high traffic volume in relation toexisting infrastructure capacity in the Oslo-Stockholmroute, long queues at the borders between Estonia-Latviaand Latvia-Russia. There are also bottlenecks at the portsin the Baltic Sea area, where they are increasingly forced toadapt their operations and geographical scope in relationto growing large cities, where the consequence is that portareas have less land available, ” says Alaeddine.

A PUBLISHED PAPER IN NETWORK INDUSTRIES QUARTERLYNetwork Industries Quarterly has been published fourtimes a year since 2008. One of its special issuesfocuses on digitalising infrastructure. This specialissue includes also the paper written by therepresentatives of Åbo Akademi University (Finland).Åbo Akademi University is a partner of project BalticLoop and leads working package ‘Business models forsmart and sustainable sea’.Tsvetkova, Gustafsson andWikström identify how digitalisation is transformingthe infrastructure of ports and how, as a result, portmanagers are under growing pressure to provideprompt service.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HEREstart from page 7