Urbanisation is a natural process determined by the opportunities offered by cities and if they don’t rethink their transport priorities or the surface allocated to infrastructure development and to the connections with national transport systems, most probably they will not be able to answer to the increasing density and population. This will inevitably create issues such as congestion, insufficiency of transport services, excessive extensions and intense pollution in the entire area. Also, if actions will not be efficiently coordinated and in conformity with urban development plans, the cities will be confronted with the lack of proper investments to benefit from positive externalities generated by the increasing density.
Infrastructure investments are vital, but at the same time the financial value of projects is massive as it requires the construction of new transport routes that would sustain the entire mobility system, electricity systems, supply systems etc. “Once set, the physical structures of a city can remain in force over 150 years and in conformity with current trends, the estimated increase of urban population will be accompanies, at city level, by the three-fold increase of the surfaces of construction facilities from 200 thousand square km to 600 thousand square km, shows the latest report elaborated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (“Rural-Urban Dynamics and the Millennium Development Goals”).
The developing world’s urban centres are expected to burgeon, drawing 96% of the additional 1.4 billion people by 2030. To meet urban growth, it is necessary to align policies in order to develop essential infrastructures for delivering efficient services. In the context of urbanisation, cities are forced to grow and the urban transport network becomes extremely important in ensuring the mobility and connectivity of the regions of the city with jobs, the highly industrialized areas with highly populated areas.
“Urbanization does matter. However, in order to harness the economic and social benefits of urbanization, policy-makers must plan for efficient land-use, match population densities with the required needs for transport, housing and other infrastructure, and arrange the financing needed for such urban development programs,” said Jos Verbeek, Lead Economist at the World Bank and lead author of the Global Monitoring Report.
Most of the reports elaborated by important international institutions show that, due to the increasing urbanisation, it is necessary to create an efficient, performing and developed transport system that would focus on public transport rather than on individual motorized transport. The reason is well-known: it has a negative role on the social, economic and environmental segments and implicitly on the development of public transport systems. To give a chance to sustainability, the priorities of the transport infrastructure have to be redefined and the adopted policies have to include social, economic, space and environmental visions over society development. Practically, it is quite clear that transport policies, especially for passengers, can strongly influence the efficient use of the urban space, as well as the simulation and long-term expansion of peri-urban expansion. The challenge consists in elaborating a political regulation to allow the planning of long-term investment programme on public transport that would consider urban expansion and to determine the appropriate use of space, urban social facilities and urban infrastructure.
New development projects still face the financing issue
Cities play a key role in increasing production and export by delivering a wide range of services which, in turn, contri-bute to maintaining economic activities and the dynamics of a state’s urbanisation. Big cities tend to have good domestic and external links and to provide the most varied services and products.
Cities in Eurasia are no exception being a crucial factor in the integration of the region in the world markets. But to reach this objective, the political class in every country of Eurasia has to plan its urban areas very efficiently to tackle traffic congestion and the maximisation of the agglomeration of economic activities. By improving connectivity between cities, launching infrastructure projects to support public transport, creating a lifestyle that will adopt the new requirements in terms of building sustainable communities, the authorities have to have a major contribution in deve-loping a society with an increased level of life quality.
“Cities in Eurasia have to be rethought to be competitive in the market economy and to become growth elements for the region they pertain to; to that end, political factors have to promote and to reorganise cities through concepts that would encourage a better planning, connectivity and sustainability”, states the WB in its report “Eurasian Cities: New Realities Along the Silk Road”.
As regards public transport, the countries in Eurasia are still confronted with problems regarding the regulatory and legislative frameworks which are insufficiently developed. They are also challenged by the lack of standards for the provided services. Moreover, the underfinancing in the past decades has increased the number of vehicles which has obviously led to a decreasing share of public transport. However, in the past three years the authorities have begun to tackle the problem and to improve the situation. Positive changes are obvious due to the authorities’ position towards the importance of public transport: strategies and programmes are elaborated for the development of urban rail transport systems and, budgets are adopted along with these projects and negotiations are carried out with the financial institutions to finance the development of transport infrastructure.
Currently, the cities in Eurasia have pu-blic transport systems although they still need to develop them; the cities that be-nefit from metro systems or from a network of tram lines are trying to adopt financing plans for the construction of new lines and those which don’t have these transport modes, especially trams (for example, many cities in the former soviet countries have given up their tram infrastructure, but some of them rethink their urban planning for the reconstruction of lines).
A relevant example is the city of Yerevan, the capital of Armenia: after a period of three decades in which the authorities have not invested in the development of the metro system, they have recently announced that they have undergone negotiations with international banks to grant credits dedicated to the suburban transport infrastructure. Apart from these financings, Yerevan Metro will also receive EU funds.
Another city that will massively invest in the transport infrastructure is Kiev (Ukraine) which focuses investments on expanding the metro lines for which the 2030 strategy includes the doubling of the network through the construction of 3 new lines and the extension of the existing lines.
In EU member states, Sofia is an example of encouraging public transport by allocating investments. The ambitions of local authorities consist in the development of the metro lines to cover 70% of the surface of the Bulgarian capital and consequently, the metro system will cover 60% of the share of public transport.
These are only few examples which prove the orientation of the authorities in favour of public transport. Therefore the challenge that the Eurasian region will be confronted within the next years will be to make sure that public transport will keep a stable market share so as not to abandon cities to congestion and pollution.
At the level of transport infrastructure, the big cities in the region of Central Asia and Europe reposition the role of public transport due to the awareness of its importance in the social, economic and environmental system. This is not only obvious from the reports elaborated by the governments or financial institutions, but also due to the launch of public transport projects in every city.
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