Abstract:

The current paper aims to clarify, as far as possible, the steps taken by Romania in the last decades to support the development of a strong and harmonious multimodal transport system, while highlighting the shortcomings and obstacles encountered in the implementation of this country project. Proposals are also presented to improve the existing situation and accelerate the development of an efficient multimodal transport system in Romania, in line with the national needs and requirements of the Community policy in the field. In this context the paper underline that the EU strategy for sustainable and smart mobility, published in December 2020, identifies a number of concrete initiatives in ten key areas, such as increasing the number of zero-emission vehicles; making sustainable alternative solutions available to the public and businesses; supporting digitalisation and automation; improving connectivity and access with a view to achieving the objective of climate neutrality for the transport sector by 2050. In this context, a real solution for reducing energy consumption and imports of petroleum products is undoubtedly the stimulation of the long-term development of multimodal transport. This takes into account that the multimodality of transport leads to the efficient use of modes with capacity reserves (rail, inland waterways and maritime transport) with beneficial effects on energy consumption and pollutant emissions. An important conclusion of this study paper is that the Romanian policy, regarding multimodal transport, must always consider harmonising and integrating actions within European policies in the field and reallocating quotas of different modes by creating the conditions for transferring as much as possible of freight transport from road mode to the most environmentally friendly ones such as the multimodal one.