STBR - SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT IN THE BARENTS REGION

Barents Region consists of 13 sub-regions in four countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. The region has a large area and low population. Its economic activities are located in few central areas, which are wide apart and poorly connected with each other. Industry and business face the situation where markets are far away, distances long, and most importantly, transport costs high.

Several national transport systems, supported by the Governments, are operating in parallel on the national level, which creates a strong isolating frontier effect for cross-border cooperation. The solution would be to establish good transport sector cooperation within the region and create a common view about the needs that eventually lead to a more compatible interregional transport system.

Cooperation in transport planning had to be developed. The STBR project improved region-wide transport infrastructure and services, eliminated the effects of borders and poor infrastructure, treated regions as a single transport area and encouraged the authorities to jointly plan the region’s transport infrastructure and services.

To improve region-wide transport infrastructure in the long-term STBR produced basic building blocks for future work in transport development and built multi-national networks – within and between authorities, stakeholders and experts. The best concrete example is the “Barents Seaport Co-operation Forum” that resulted in the founding of the Barents Port Association.

STBR compiled extensive databases of the characteristics and details of the Barents transportation system – the information that the partners did not have before. As a result 16 sub-projects were carried out in road transport, aviation, rail, maritime and logistics sectors. A wealth of information was accumulated and analysed.

STBR was used as a stable platform for the subsequent STBR II project, which takes the next step in the process of creating a joint transport system for the Barents Region to a more concrete level.