V4 countries want to coordinate commuting in border regions

Transport coordination between the Visegrad Four (V4) countries was the topic a conference in Bratislava on Wednesday that was attended by representatives of the Visegrad Four (V4) countries.

the V4 countries - Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary - signed a memorandum on cooperation on developing integrated transport systems.

Many people in border regions commute to work to one of the four countries. "We raised issues concerning better transport connections for commuting to large businesses whose workers commute from abroad," stressed Slovak Transport Ministry State Secretary Viktor Stromcek.

A quarter of individual journeys in Slovakia are made by public transport. Railways are used by around 6 percent of people, public road transport by around 13 percent, public city transport by 3 percent and air transport by 2.5 percent. "The question still is how to persuade people to prefer public transport to individual," said Stromcek.

According to Stromcek, the key carrier system in Slovakia is railways. The number of passengers is rising due to the modernisation of this type of travel, and 75 percent of all trains can be renovated using EU funds.

The Czech Republic has three levels of transport - state, regional and city. "Sometimes the relations between regions are so good that there are no blank spaces on their borders where transit doesn't operate," pointed out Kamil Rudolecky, a representative of the Czech Transport Ministry.

Hungary faces similar problems to Slovakia's. "The main problem has historical roots, and that is that bus and train transport are competitors. So, there are parallel connections that we have to get rid of so that the system will work better," added Florian Szaloki from Hungary's Ministry of National Development. Endit