The ISTEN project was approved for co-financing during the call for standard Interreg ADRION projects in 2017, priority axis 3, which aims to “ENHANCE CAPACITY FOR INTEGRATED TRANSPORT AND MOBILITY SERVICES AND MULTIMODALITY in the Adriatic-Ionian region”. The project involves 7 partners from the EU region, including Luka Koper and 3 associated partners. The activities will be attended by partners from Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and Greece.
The project ISTEN aims at qualifying ADRION Ports as strategic nodes and hubs for the ADRION Region by setting up strategies, clusters and joint action plans to improve hinterland intermodal connections pushing in particular rail freight flows and last mile connections to the TEN-T Corridors. At present a lack of cooperation and infrastructure (hard&soft) sharing among relevant actors and massive road congestion problems affecting links port-hinterland, are significant limits to efficiency. To date 74% of EU trade goes by ship and 37% of the total intra-EU exchange of goods (in tonne-km) goes through the EU’s ports (source EC, Ports: gateways of the TEN-T). 27% of freight in EU ports is handled in Mediterranean Ports and by 2030 traffic is expected to rise by 50%. It is clear that infrastructures and transport services must be updated in order to be ready to receive this volume of freight. ISTEN involves ports from Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, Albania and Montenegro as main gateways to the trans-European network, and aims to: 1) steer priorities of involved territories by identifying bottlenecks (economic & transport networks) having integrated infrastructure planning at transnational level, consistent investment strategies, with special attention to hinterland accessibility and modal shift towards railway; 2)provide guidelines & criteria for defining legal, technical and operational conditions (toolbox) useful to establish an efficient ADRION hub by clustering stakeholder and operators; 3)build capacities in planning infrastructures and identifying measures and actions to be adopted for setting-up integrated hubs. ISTEN’s final output is a strategic and local plan for the development of an integrated hubs’ network at ADRION level. Regional & National Authorities, as well as freight operators and other actors involved in the logistic chain will benefit from this output, that will positively affect transport efficiency and environmental sustainability at ADRION’s regional level.
