Zagreb, June 14th - the "Go-rail - Go Green” project was presented at the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure
"Go-rail - Go Green" project is co-financed by the European Marco Polo II program which aims to increase the share of intermodal transport and reducing the burden of road traffic and its negative impact on the environment by directing traffic from road to rail, sea and inland waterways.
Through this project, launched in January 2013 the EU funds will subsidize the cost of container transport by train up to 30% in order to divert freight from road to the environmentally more acceptable and in the long term more sustainable transport by rail. The research of the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences in Zagreb on the consumption of electricity in road and rail traffic has shown that the consumption of energy in rail traffic is 2.7 times smaller. Also, the rail traffic has significantly lower emission of greenhouse gases (only carbon dioxide emissions by 27 tons).
These data speak in favour of a reduction in road traffic and prioritizing rail traffic as the most environmentally friendly transport that needs to be developed. The tendency of transit time reduction and retention at border crossings, less damage to the road infrastructure, avoidance of bottlenecks in large cities and unburdening of road infrastructure during the tourist season, all speak in favour of rail transport.
The coordinator of the "Go-rail - Go Green" project is the company Agit (daughter company of HŽ Cargo) and is being implemented in partnership with Adriatic Gate Container Terminal (AGCT) Rijeka, Croatia and Baltic Container Terminal (BCT) Gdynia, Poland. Value of the subsidy is 1.048 million € and successfulness of the project will be measured in net tonne kilometres shifted from road to rail on the Rijeka – Belgrade route.
During the presentation of the project Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Mr. Sinisa Hajdaš Dončić, and director of Agit, Mr. Zlatko Martić have addressed the participants of the conference.
At the presentation of the "Go-rail - Go Green," Drazen Žgaljić, Director of the Intermodal Transport Cluster, has also presented other projects of the maritime sector co-financed from EU funds. These are the eight projects from four different programs conducted by the Port Authority of Ploce, Dubrovnik, Rijeka, Zadar and the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, whose total value of subsidies for Croatian partners amounts to more than 3 million €.