Brussels, 28/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 28 May, the European Parliament's transport and tourism committee adopted the draft report of Dieter-Lebrecht Koch (EPP, Germany) on putting in place a multimodal integrated ticketing system in Europe (40 for, 0 against, with 4 abstentions). The rapporteur stated: “(Multimodal transport) doesn't need to remain a dream. We identified the obstacles that exist and now we have to work on overcoming them”.
While welcoming the efforts made by public authorities and the private sector, Koch said that, overall, it had been a failure when it came to implementing a multimodal travelling system at European level, despite this being one of the priorities in the 2011 White Paper on a single European transport area. He went on: “Until now, it has been not just difficult, but almost impossible to get tickets for cross-border travel using, for example, a train and a bus".
The report calls on member states to: - set up an efficient information system on local public transport by 2020; - equip the urban public transport sector with smart information transmission systems in real time by 2023 at the latest; - develop a cross-border network of national information systems on transport timetables.
In the long term, the project seeks to provide travellers with more comprehensive information regarding the journeys available using different modes of transport. The German MEP concluded: “This will be very useful for EU citizens and beneficial for our society, economy and environment as well as tourism”. The report will be put to the vote at the next plenary session. (Pascal Hansens)