The Director of the Transport Union, Matej Zakonjšek, who today in Sarajevo is participating in the 12th Congress on Transport Infrastructure and Transport Dedicated to Railways, said that the main task of the Transport Union is to return the railway to its place and, accordingly, they are doing a lot of work on establishing of passenger connections between the main cities in the Balkans.
The Transport Community (TC) is an international organization founded in 2017 with the aim of developing the transport network between the European Union and the countries of Southeast Europe, whose members are the European Union and six countries of the Western Balkans – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. .
“At the moment, we only have one connection between Belgrade and Bar, and our goal is to establish a connection between Sarajevo and Zagreb, as well as between Sarajevo and Ploče, and for it to function as a standard offer,” emphasized Zakonjšek.
Among other things, this is one of the topics of the two-day congress where, as he added, efforts will be made to contribute to raising the quality of transport services in BiH. Zakonjšek added that the value of projects depends on their type, and that the most important thing is to be ready for their implementation in terms of legal bases and project preparation.
“There is money, the European Commission has defined it in the investment plan, and as for the price, it depends on the standard that you want to achieve in terms of, for example, electrification, speed, etc. The legal basis and reforms along with investments in infrastructure are an option for mutual benefit,” said Zakonjšek.
The conclusions from this congress, as the Secretary of the Ministry of Communications and Transport of Bosnia and Herzegovina Igor Pejić said, should help decision makers to determine solutions in the direction of integration into the European railway system. Pejić stated that in this sense it is necessary to follow the trends with which we are far behind.
“In the time since the adoption of the Framework Transport Strategy until today, great changes have taken place, we need new railway routes and renovation of the existing ones and that they be integrated into the TEN-T network (Trans-European Road Network) as soon as possible. In that part, we need the support of the profession and certainly of decision-makers,” Pejić pointed out.
He reminded that 2021 was the year of railways in the EU and that urgent steps are needed to follow European trends.
The congress, organized by the Association of Consulting Engineers of Bosnia and Herzegovina (UKI BIH/ ACE BH), is being held at the time of the global revitalization of railways as an acceptable solution in the fight against climate change.
President of the Association of BiH Engineer Consultants Ešref Gačanin said that railways, as part of the transport solution, are one of the key components of the development of every society. The congress has an international character and, like the previous one, gathered experts and scientists, representatives of government institutions, as well as non-governmental organizations.
“The participants who will present their papers at this congress are from BiH, Austria, Montenegro, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Italy, Germany, Slovenia, Serbia, Turkey and China, and there are 33 author’s works. All papers and presentations will be published in the proceedings. The large response is a consequence of the fact that in the great globalization and rapid increase in trade, transport has come to the first place in terms of importance,” added Gačanin.
As he pointed out, the European Community adopted its rules on railways 30 years ago and the transport policy is one of the common policies of the European Union, given that transport knows no borders.
