TEXT: SUSANNE LINDSTRÖM
ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT HILMERSSON

Today’s major European transport routes are full of bottlenecks, especially at border crossings.
In 2007, the European Union launched the concept of “green corridors” to enable traffic to flow more smoothly and efficiently and in a more environmentally acceptable, climate-smart manner. With today’s economic and climatic concerns, people are looking with increasing interest at the concept, says Jerker Sjögren, a special adviser at the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications and coordinator of Sweden’s green corridors work.

In 2006, the transport sector accounted for 19 percent of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions. It was the only sector in which such emissions rose. In response, in autumn 2007 the European Commission published a freight logistics action plan that launched the concept of green corridors and urged EU member countries to think about what might be done to create a more coherent transport system in Europe.

Fresh thinking required

“Now that a few years have passed, we can say that the initiative was a good response to major challenges that the transport industry, and thus the economy as a whole, is facing today,” says Sjögren. “Recovery from the global recession is sluggish, and the threat of climate change will require fresh thinking in all economic sectors. This is why many people are attaching great hopes to green corridors. By means of efficient logistics and smoother transport, we can both help lubricate the economy and reduce environment impacts.”

In Sweden, with its long distances and relatively heavy dependence on exports, there is a great need to optimise transport flows, Sjögren says. The green corridors concept has been well-received by the country’s Logistics Forum, an Enterprise Ministry advisory board that includes representatives from the business community, universities and research institutions.

“We had our kick-off in the autumn of 2008 and began by trying to arrive at a definition of what ‘green corridors’ actually are,” he says. The European Commission had not formulated such a definition.

The Logistics Forum reached a consensus that green corridors should be based on six points:
• Sustainable logistics solutions and the utilisation of co-modality
• A harmonised system of rules, with openness for all players
• A concentration of national and international goods traffic on long transport routes
• Strategically placed trans-shipment points
• Adapted and supportive infrastructure
• Innovative information systems, collaboration models and technology.

Among these points, the concept of co-modality is particularly important, Sjögren says. It means that every mode of transport – rail, roadways, maritime shipping and sometimes also aviation – should be included on its own merits, helping to achieve the most efficient, least environmentally destructive overall solution.

The importance of co-modality

“Generally speaking, it is a matter of finding solutions in which you drive a truck a short distance and feed cargo to a terminal for onward transport by train or boat, then do the opposite at the other end,” he says. “You could describe it as going the first mile and the last mile by truck and the rest by rail or by sea.”

Sjögren emphasises that although these ideas are not new, because of technical and administrative obstacles this kind of co-modal transport remains uncommon. In technical terms, for example, there are problems in transferring cargo between different modes of transport.

“In administrative terms, there is still too much hassle when it comes to crossing land borders, especially by train,” Sjögren says. “And it requires a lot of paper-pushing. We think this should have been fully digitised a long time ago.”

However, there are positive early examples of co-modal transport. The Logistics Forum has singled out nearly a dozen high-priority projects that will contribute to the development of green corridors. These include a transport route between Maschen, Germany, and Hallsberg, Sweden, in which railways provide cross-border service and trucks feed into trans-shipment terminals along the route.

Biofuels and train

Inside Sweden’s borders, there is also a prioritised model project in which rail freight carrier Green Cargo, truck manufacturers Scania and Volvo and fashion chain KappAhl are collaborating to reduce environmental impact. Deliveries arrive in Gothenburg by ship, are driven in a biodiesel-powered Volvo truck to a terminal, travel by Green Cargo train to the Årsta terminal in southern Stockholm, then travel from there by ethanol-powered Scania truck to clothing stores in Stockholm.

“This project has succeeded in showing a large impact in the form of reduced emissions,” Sjögren says.

Sjögren maintains that green corridor efforts have reached a threshold where it is time to shift into a higher gear. A number of international collaboration projects have been established, both at the political level and between public authorities and transport companies.

“Green corridors will be an important element of European transport policy in the coming decade,” he says. “Now we need to fill the concept with real-world content. The point of departure is that we have to base this work on today’s transport flows, select a few routes across Europe where the volume is greatest and create some form of pilot corridors for the concept in which both business models and new technology can be tested.”

4 transport routes

1. Corridor A
A rail link between the major ports of Rotterdam, Netherlands, and Genoa, Italy. This is already a model in the EU, and governments, rail authorities and other major players in the transport sector in four countries have joined to form a consortium to facilitate administration, thereby making transport services more efficient. It is an interesting model to build on and supplement, for example with feeder traffic to terminals along the route.
2. The Brenner Corridor
A highway and railway from Munich, Germany, through the Alps and the Brenner Pass down to Torino, Italy. The countries along the route have begun to collaborate in order to improve infrastructure, eliminate bottlenecks and identify administrative obstacles and safety/security risks that need to be addressed.
3. The Western Corridor
A co-modal transport route from Rotterdam northward via Denmark and Sweden’s west coast to Oslo, Norway. Sweden has made initial contacts with ministries and other players in the affected countries. The next step will be to draft joint guidelines for a coherent route that can efficiently take advantage of environmentally adapted co-modal transport.
4. The East-West Corridor
The route from Denmark in the west along Sweden’s south coast and across the Baltic Sea to the Baltic countries, onward towards Belarus and eventually perhaps via the Trans-Siberian Railway to China. Flows on this corridor are not so heavy today, but there is major potential. EU has designated the countries around the Baltic Sea as a macro-region where there should be extra focus on development and growth issues, including those that are transport-related.