Hungary, 23 November 2017. For two days from 23 November, the city of Miskolc hosted one of the study visits of Interreg Europe TRAM project. The opening event of the project was held on Thursday morning at the City Hall. "Our city aims to take a large part from the smart and green innovations, and will keep this focus even more important in the future. We can show good examples to our international partners"said Peter Pfliegler, Vice Mayor of Miskolc. As he said, further developments in public transportation are being planned, he hopes that the e-ticket will be introduced in the next few years on public transportation in the city.
Miskolc (Hungary) is proud of their vehicle fleet, 31 modern, brand new trams and 75 CNG-powered buses provide public transportation. János Juhász, Director of Services at MVK Plc., said that several smart solutions have been introduced in recent years, in addition to vehicle fleet. These developments were also presented to the TRAM’s project partners. Detailed information on CNG buses was discussed and the Green Arrow project of Miskolc was also presented. According to Árpád Horánszky, Urban Development Coordinator, by being included in TRAM Interreg Europe project, local experts also have access to relevant information and experience - to the knowledge that Miskolc may not yet have. "The partners within this Europen Union funded project share their experiences and knowledge with the experts responsible for the development of the cities. By doing that we got very good ideas and we have already started to work a few of them out. We may not be able to do everything, of course we can not guarantee this, and in some cases the ideas are too expensive for our budget. However, it is worthwhile to collect and discuss the ideas, and we will integrate what we can into our development plans", added Árpád Horánszky.
Mathias Roos, Strategic and Communications Manager of Blekinge region in Sweden, considers these study visits extremely useful. As he said "This project is very interesting for us, because we are also learning how to help our partners with good solutions. We've had a lot of discussions and we realized that we face the same challanges, but sometimes we try to solve them differently. We have learned a lot about sustainable mobility so far, and it is also important to see the differences that can help us in advance”.
Of course during the study visit, guests had the chance to try what they saw during the presentations of Miskolc’s urban transportation, like the CNG buses and trams.
By developing the local transport systems of the five partners and exchanging experiences with professionals, the TRAM project contributes to the strengthening of a competitive, resource efficient and low carbon European transport system.
