Urban roads and public transport services are essential for the daily lives of citizens and for the local economy, increasing in importance, as cities grow larger and travel distances to work become too long for walking. The importance of urban public transport services is unusually pronounced in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region. The socialist-era heritage of cities in ECA includes a predominance of public transport modes in passenger travel, based on a universal access to low-priced and good-quality transport services.

The results of this on the street scene, in terms of transport service availability and quality, have posed a unique challenge to urban societies in ECA, with intertwined growth, equity, poverty and environmental concerns.

Through its CIFAL training centers UNITAR offers workshops on challenges and approaches in SUT targeted at Mayors, local authorities, directors of technical services and representatives of other governmental and non-governmental entities. GTZ SUTP supports these workshops on a regular basis through presentations and the dissemination. Since 2006 three workshops on sustainable urban transport were held: Plock 2006, Tallinn 2007 and Plock 2007.

Key issues of our work are:

• Encourage knowledge-sharing between municipal and regional practitioners in the field of sustainable urban transport

• Disseminate expertise in the fields of

  • financing public transport,

  • fleet modernization,

  • integrated transport management,

  • private sector participation,

  • awareness raising and multi-stakeholder consultations and

  • sustainable modes of transport.

In order to facilitate and to enhance the dialogue on sustainable urban transport, UNITAR and GTZ SUTP are happy to introduce this webpage as focal point for professionals and decision-makers in the ECA-region.

Besides this webpage GTZ SUTP and UNITAR are facilitating the continued exchange of information through a newsgroup (SUTECA). The newsgroup is open to all parties interested in sharing information, questions and concerns on a peer-to-peer basis with professionals and decision-makers in the region (more/free subscription).

It is your forum! It allows you to contact about 100 professionals working in local authorities in the ECA region. Just send your email to SUTECA@mailserv.gtz.de to get in contact!

Occasionally, both, UNITAR and GTZ-SUTP as well as other partners will use the newsgroup to inform on their activities in the field of sustainable urban transport.

Although the newsgroup is moderated in English, please feel free to submit your questions, contributions and comments in your language. A fair share of users is speaking Russian, Ukrainian, Polish or Serbian.