The EU’s sustainable transport concept

Transport entails social and environmental costs. For this reason, states and international organizations are taking a series of actions aimed at reducing its negative impact to the necessary minimum. To this end, all available tools are used to make transport ecological. In this regard, every action, whether it be the adoption of appropriate policy measures, the use of the least environmentally invasive forms of transport, the use of alternative fuels, or the development of innovative technologies capable of neutralizing the threats posed by transport, is worthy of time and financial resources. The main goal of the European Union’s transport policy is to strive for sustainable transport development. This balance is based on shaping transport demand and allocating resources in such a way that, on the one hand, there are no obstacles to access, and on the other, there is no congestion or excessive nuisance to the environment. This primarily concerns reducing the carriage of goods by road transport in favor of rail, inland waterway and maritime transport, and multimodal solutions, as well as increasing the importance of public transport, including an increase in the share of rail vehicles in passenger transport. The White Paper on transport, amended in 2011, refers to these guidelines and even sets even more ambitious goals to be achieved by 2050. The purpose of the publication is to present the development trends of transport in Polish regions against the background of the EU’s sustainable transport concept. To achieve this goal, the method of analyzing strategic documents and available statistical data was used.
The genesis of sustainable development and the EU’s sustainable transport concept
Sustainable development, also known as eco-development, is socio-economic development in which, in order to balance the opportunities for access to the environment for citizens, a process of integrating political, economic, and social actions takes place, guaranteeing the preservation of natural balance and the durability of basic natural processes. Due to the extensive substantive scope of the concept of sustainable development, broadly understood sustainable development is regulated by a multitude of international and national legal provisions. The term eco-development was first used at the United Nations Conference (…)

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