Cooperation from the very beginning: SEETAC presentation at Kick of Meeting of Project SETA
The project SETA (South East Transport Axis), financed within
the South East Europe Program, is aiming at the implementation of
measures for the improvement of accessibility and logistic
workflows as the basis for regional development in the South East
Europe. The project lead partner is the Land Burgenland, other
project partners are regions along the corridors, harbours, a
railway company, research institutes and the Ministries of
Transport of Slovakia and Austria.
Its geographical focus, the SETA corridor connects the regions
of Adriatic coast via Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary with the Twin
City Region Vienna Bratislava and up to the eastern parts of
Germany. The corridor will not be part of the future TEN-T
core network, but it acts as a supplement to the TEN-T core
network, ensuring the accessibility of the regions concerned.
SETA will focus on upgrading of already existing rail
infrastructure and the connection to all other means of transport.
SETA will provide the project partners with information and
data (on the level of single development measures), which they need
in order to start negotiations with international financial
institutions. For this reason, transport model for the
corridor will be developed.
The SETA project acts on a different scale than SEETAC: Whilst
SETA is aiming to develop concrete measures and services along a
rather limited area, SEETAC is the main platform of coordination of
infrastructure policy in the South East Europe. The key drivers of
SETA are regions, those of SEETAC are Ministries of Transport.
Nevertheless, it is important to ensure an effective cooperation
between the two projects. SETA can use the data and information
that have been collected within SEETAC; also the platform of
cooperation between Ministries of Transport established by SEETAC
might be useful for SETA in a way that the concrete SETA plans can
be considered by SEETAC.
The cooperation between the projects be organised by the
Austrian Ministry of Transport, which is a project partner in both
projects. As a first step of this cooperation, a representative of
the Austrian Ministry of Transport made a presentation on SEETAC at
the Kick-Off Meeting of SETA that was held on November 24th, 2011
in Bratislava.
Thomas Spiegel
Ministry of Transport Innovation and Technology, Austria