Policy measures to realise green corridors — A stakeholder perspective

The findings from the implementation of economic incentives in Europe, such as CO2 tax and road user charges are encouraging, but it is unlikely to be enough to reduce CO2 emissions from the freight transport sector by the required amount. Creating the so-called Green Corridors is one of the many measures being applied by the EU to make the freight transport sector more sustainable. The aim of this article is to adopt a stakeholder perspective on concepts and measures that will be necessary to establish a successful Green Corridor. A literature review and interviews with experts were used to generate input for a workshop at which stakeholders from academia, government bodies and the transport industry jointly devised new concepts and policy measures for the creation of Green Corridors. A combination of positive incentives, agreements, taxes and regulations is needed to make transport companies willing to participate. A promising pathway employs measures that ensure punctuality and accessibility, but also remove bureaucratic and infrastructural bottlenecks. In return, the transport operators must use significantly improved environmental technology in the corridors. Cooperation between actors is needed in order to raise load factors in the system, by increasing transparency and offering free capacity to other operators in the corridor.