Transport

The fundamentals of our concept stand on principles of intermodality, networking, and sustainability. What new and innovative approach do we want to take in the European transport policy? We base our thinking on a complex view of supply chains, careful planning and transparent financing throughout the entire project lifespan. Knowledge of the whole image is time-limited; we appreciate confrontation with attentive, critical minds as it helps to prevent mistakes at the time of their appearance when it is easy to recognize and correct them.

Alternative fuels cannot save our planet while we continue to waste energy. We support a Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities initiative – where you can walk, you should not drive. Where you can drive together, you should not ride solo. The EU is losing billions of euros daily in productive time when commuters are stuck in traffic jams. That is why we promote coworking or work from home wherever applicable; civil service included.

Shunting goods around Europe for the purpose of tax optimization or importing them just because of holey local workers’ rights is hypocrisy. We aim to create legislation which enables consumer to see the complete costs of production supply chains in order to transform EU preferences accordingly; e.g. promoting local waste-free food consumption over overseas imports.

In the long-term we envisage the use of bikes and public transport to access transport hubs, trains for domestic travel inside EU, and planes primarily to reach overseas destinations. Sharing is caring! Our priority here is adequacy: the total cost of any solution (including long-term maintenance) has to be proportional to the overall public benefit. We support innovative solutions like autonomous truck trains, smart roads and parking lots, freight trams or modular buses where appropriate.

European transport rules are full of exceptions. To get these rules aligned, competitive salary and working conditions for all professional drivers across the continent must be implemented, as well as truck driving ban harmonization and a single market for locomotives and trams. We support progressive legislation for autonomous, driverless cars to settle liability issues and keep the EU on the top of the automotive innovation ladder.

Different modes of transport should be made legally equal, have a transparent system of subsidies and their cost should reflect all applicable externalities.

We aim for a single, publicly controlled, easy-to-use toll satellite system for commercial transport on highways, allowing the use of open source apps, enabling to process anonymized big data and thus improve both municipal and interstate traffic management. We insist that eCall and other similar movement recording devices remain optional and their data strictly anonymous, so that participation in any such transport monitoring activity remains a transparent tool of choice with public benefits, rather than a compulsory means of government surveillance using outsourced contractors and opaque control mechanisms.

Current transport streams, especially in new EU countries, still copy mainly the old national hierarchy. Utilizing new dynamic transport options (bike and car-sharing schemes, on-demand public transport, hailing apps) we will strive to allow new natural transport streams, that will ignore national borders. All EU citizens have the right to truly free movement. These measures allow boosting of peripheral regions that are often the least performing within the countries.

Large EU metropolitan areas are currently in legal limbo regarding the ride-hailing apps (Taxify, UBER), thereby hindering further research and development of those projects. We believe that the legislature has to reflect the current technology development and that one common framework for ride-hailing apps should exist on EU level, allowing GPS and similar technologies to be recognized as a certified system for the calculation of distances. Legalizing ride-hailing apps will be a great benefit for rural areas and less wealthy individuals.

The EU should work towards a harmonized legislation for autonomous vehicles.