Summary: In this White Paper, the Commission sets out to remove major barriers and bottlenecks in many key areas across the fields of transport infrastructure and investment, innovation and the internal market. The aim is to create a Single European Transport Area with more competition and a fully integrated transport network which links the different modes and allows for a profound shift in transport patterns for passengers and freight. To this purpose, the roadmap puts forward 40 concrete initiatives for the next decade, explained in detail in the Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the White Paper. It has some background relevance for CORE, as it proposes initiatives to build a competitive transport system that will preserve mobility, remove major barriers in key areas and fuel growth and employment. Original files are coded CORE1029, in the CORE e-library.

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The White Paper shows how we can achieve the transformation of our transport system, keeping our objective to reduce CO2 emissions by 60 % by 2050 through:

• developing and deploying new and sustainable fuels and propulsion systems;
• optimising the performance of multimodal logistic chains, including by making greater use of more energy-efficient modes;
• increasing the efficiency of transport and of infrastructure use with information systems (including SESAR and Galileo) and market-based incentives (such as the application of “user pays” and “polluter pays” principles).

It also sets ten goals to guide policy and measure our progress inter alia on:

• phasing out conventionally fuelled cars and trucks from cities by 2050;
• shifting 30 % of medium and long distance road freight to other modes by 2030;
• using cars for less than half of middle distance travel by 2050; and
• halving road traffic deaths by 2020 and achieving near-zero casualties in road transport by 2050.

In order to implement the above goals, a genuine single European transport area needs to be established by eliminating all existing barriers between modes and national systems, easing the process of integration and facilitating the emergence of multinational and multimodal operators. A single European transport area would facilitate the movement of EU citizens and freight, reduce costs and improve the sustainability of EU transport. A transformation of the current European transport system will only be possible through a combination of initiatives at all levels and covering all transport modes.

Citation: Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area – Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system /* COM/2011/0144 final. European Commission, 2011

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