Today the Commission publishes four new guidance documents, developed under the SMARTA-NET Project
Sustainable rural mobility in support of ecotourism’. The project, a European initiative active from 2022 to 2024, addressed one of the most persistent challenges in European transport policy: ensuring sustainable and equitable mobility for rural areas.
In many parts of Europe, rural communities experience a significant mobility deficit, as access to essential services like employment, education, healthcare, and recreation becomes increasingly concentrated in urban centres. This trend deepens reliance on private vehicles, exacerbating socioeconomic inequalities, increasing carbon emissions, and putting individuals without access to a car at risk of transport poverty.
Within this context, SMARTA-NET produced four guidance documents:
• On Rural Mobility Shared Solutions, introducing good practice mobility solutions that can address mobility deficits in rural areas, how these can be packaged, and seamlessly integrated with the mainstream public transport network. The Guidance comes with a Catalogue detailing over 30 mobility solutions. (....)