24.2.2022
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
L 45/1415 COMMISSION PILOT PROJECTS
CHAPTER PP 02 — EUROPEAN STRATEGIC INVESTMENTS (cont'd) PP 02 21
(cont'd)
PP 02 21 05
(cont'd) After one year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with all its socioeconomic consequences besides the devastating loss of lives, there have been obvious impacts among other aspects of the labour market into a more remote working culture.
If certain aspects of the tele-working patterns are maintained, both for public and private sectors, this could trigger a remarkable amount of individuals and families to consider settling in rural areas, in order to benefit from cleaner air quality, closer contact to nature and a calmer and less noisy environment.
Whether they do it or not might be highly dependent on whether they can be guaranteed a mobility not necessarily dependent on the use of private car in order to be able to commute to urban area when required professionally and to satisfy the needs of daily lives within the region.
This, together with the already existing needs for population currently living in rural areas to be able to keep performing their existing economic activities while reducing their carbon footprint, requires further sustainable solutions at the rural level, making use and further developing smart and shared mobility options.
Those could be also extremely useful also in view the ever-growing demand for rural ecotourism, one natural component of which is making use of the most sustainable travel mode to reach the destination and move within the region.
With all this in mind, it is crucial from a public policy point of view to be aware of the current scenario and the twofold opportunity it represents of both mitigating and even reverting the current trend of rural exodus, which has aggravated the territorial imbalances between urban nodes and remote areas, while ensuring that also rural transport, which nowadays is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, contributes with its share to the timely emission reduction efforts required by the European Climate Law.
In this regard, it is important to stress that transport accounts for a quarter of the overall emissions and is indeed the main sector which has not achieved a reduction of those in the last decades, which makes the project in each of its components crucial, and particularly fostering a modal shift.
While still maintaining the need for structural goals and related concrete initiatives proposed in the original proposal (i.e. increased availability and connectivity with public transport and commuting lines, as well as coordinated cooperative solutions for increased frequency of passage in mountainous regions with dispersed villages, among others) and particularly advancing on the opportunities that digitisation and the aimed digital transition offer for door-to-door journeys and sustainable and smart mobility, for instance in terms of shared e-bikes or car pooling also at the rural level, the latter can also be fostered by some creative simple solutions, such as the widespreading of the LEADER-supported ‘Mitfahrerbänke’ (co-riders' benches, in English).
Those are indeed simple benches designed and placed strategically in villages to make it easier to take along and ride along on routes that are rarely used by public transport, offering both structural and punctual mobility solutions (for instance related to ecotourism) and hence promoting the shared mobility culture and hence protecting the environment.
In conclusion, beyond ideas for possible concrete additions, it is important to grant this pilot project continuity, as the EU policy process of sustainable mobility in rural areas is still at an early stage of development.
The pilot project will therefore continue focusing on interconnecting mobility needs with already ongoing projects like ‘smart villages’, ‘SMARTA’ and others, and will in particular focus on the recovery potential of rural and remote areas in the post COVID-19 period.
As mentioned, it should keep its aim to look at how to best organise and develop rural areas with their mobility solutions to connect smoothly and in the most sustainable way with the nearest urban agglomerations, as well as with neighbouring villages.
In this sense, drawing on the success story of SUMPs in the urban context, the establishment of a rural equivalent of integrative sustainable rural mobility plans could be considered.