Mr. Gunnar Fastén from NetPort.Karlshamn handed over the Green Corridor Manual to the Swedish Minister of Infrastructure at the end of the project.

The first day started with a workshop for project partners and thereafter continued with the official program with presentations by Vytautas Nauduzas (Ambassador for Transport and Energy), Ulf Johansson (SWECO) as well as Stefan Back (Transportgruppen), etc. The day was concluded with a dinner including a performance by the State song and dance ensemble "Lietuva" which was highly appreciated.

Day two paid special attention to the work of the EWTC Association as well as discussions about the future work of the Association. The Final Conference ended by Mathias Roos (Project manager) extending a special thanks to the EWTCII partners for the good and successful cooperation during the past three years.

The East West Transport Corridor which connects Europe with markets as far as Asia, is a corridor with great potential having already established effective cooperation to facilitate trade and innovation.

The three year EU funded project, EWTC II, will end its activities this year and the final conference of the project will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania. The project has focused on creating a sustainable, seamless transport corridor with special attention given to railway and hub development, as well as to the facilitation of safer and more secure truck transports.

The main findings of the project will be presented in Vilnius, with the focus on how to further develop the corridor. The project welcomes you to beautiful Vilnius to be informed and inspired!

REGISTER HERE (remember to click "End survey" at the last page in order to be registered properly).

The main objectives of the event were to analyze the opportunities and barriers of the container train "Viking" route development to Middle East (Turkey). The aim was to come to concrete agreements on the market extension of the concept. The Viking serves as a well-developed link between east and west and facilitates trade in both directions. Through agreements on national levels and between private operators, several hindrances have already been removed. Border crossing issues have been high on the agenda, as well as stable and transparent pricing of the services. The agreements also serve as basis for further development in order to enhance the sustainable performance of the Viking concept.

The event in Istanbul was held as a dialogue between public and private stakeholders, which were all well represented. The main outcome of the meeting was the signing of concrete agreements as wells as memorandums of understanding. It became evident during the dialogue that transports from Turkey to the North-European market are underdeveloped. Transports today are mainly arranged through shipping over the Mediterranean and to the largest ports in Northern Europe. A portion of the transports are also served by trucks through e.g. Bulgaria. These transports are time consuming and also show a big negative impact on environmental performance and safety and security issues. Turkey is one of the top 20 economies in the world and a large producer of products for the North-European markets. Commodities include textiles (clothing), food products and chemicals.

Access more detailed information and presentations here.

The report can be found in the Partner Documents section under WP2 at the internal project website.

The participants discussed greener transport solutions such as ITS and ICT tools as well as the transport routes of tomorrow. Application of hands on solutions improving the over-all effectiveness of the transport chain also contributes to the environmental performance as well. Being able to show the favor of green transports might also help the projects to attract more representatives from the business sector to secure a good facilitation of project's results.

The presentations from the Forum can be found on the TransBaltic project's website here.

In this issue you find a report from the project's successful exhibition on a national Green Corridor demonstration day held in Gothenburg. You'll also find a article about the project's contribution to the implementation of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region and as usual, information about comming events.

You'll find the latest issue to the right. To subscribe follow this link.

Over 130 participants from industry, national authorities and the European Commission visited the demo day in Gothenburg, which was organized within the framework of the Green Corridor work, a concept initiated by the European Commission to strengthen the transport industry's competitiveness through the development of sustainable transport.

A total of 18 exhibitors took the chance to show their green transport solutions. Region Blekinge together with NetPort.Karlshamn demonstrated how increased information exchange between actors in a transport chain can contribute to greater sustainability. The solution is called the Information Broker System and was developed as a sub project in the East West Transport Corridor II project (EWTC II) in collaboration with (among others) the Swedish Transport Administration.

- Promoting the exchange of information between actors in a transport chain can result in higher sustainability. The problem is not the amount of information but rather the difficulty in exchanging information that already exists between the various actors' own systems. With a tool like the Information Broker System stakeholders can share the right information at the right time to make the right decisions, and therefore use resources properly without placing an unnecessary burden on the environment, says Mathias Roos, project manager for the EWTC II project.

Despite a strong competition from several large industrial projects, the EWTC II project placed itself within the top three solutions. The top three demonstrations were selected by a jury of experts. As the best project the fuel company 'Preem' with their new diesel, produced from pine oil, was selected.

The work with the Information Broker System continues until the end of the EWTCII project next fall. There after the aim is to further develop the tool on a larger scale.

- Enhancing the efficiency of transport through better information management is as important as switching to alternative fuels and modern vehicles, says Mathias Roos.

The manual will give advice for organisations that are setting up a green corridor, on all issues concerned, e.g. infrastructure, operations, services and marketing of these. At the same time the manual will give information to customers that are interested in using the green corridor.

As an integrated part of the manual the background, history and purpose of the green corridor concept will be listed in order to establish a common platform for the development of the green transport corridors. One of the crucial elements is related to the understanding of the corridor being constituted of a mix of elements being of both technical and organisational nature, and that only corridors where all elements are interacting, will be successful.

An example could be, that the first green steps involve an optimization of the truck based solutions (better capacity utilization, more energy efficient engines, eco driving etc.) developing into a solution based on intermodal trains or ship, when the necessary freight volumes are at hand. By developing the corridor in such a manner, both environmental and commercial aspects are being taken into consideration in a proper way. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance, that the manual can encompass a time dimension when directing the project development.

This manual is developed within the EWTC II project, but the findings are for all green corridors throughout Europe.