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Investment needed to aid transport links
Page 6
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HEAVY investment to improve international transport links in Europe is recommended in a paper published by the Brussels EEC Conunission. The EEC's experts point out that international traffic between member countries is developing at an ever increasing rate.
It is forecast that it will treble by the year 2000 while domestic traffic will increase by only 50 per cent.
The Commission says that bottlenecks are building up within Europe both on the roads, railways and inland waterways.
There is an urgent need to connect "missing links" between existing national transport networks.
One example given is the 40 mile gap in the motorway sys tems between Thionville in Eastern France and Trier in West Germany.
• The Channel crossing is also listed as a major obstacle to the Common Market's transport infrastructure.
Within Britain improvements could be made to the transport links with ports in East Anglia.
The paper argues that governments face "increased difficulties" in undertaking major works which are not of purely national interest.
Over the past 20 years results obtained "do less than justice to the efforts that have been made".
So Brussels calls for an action programme backed by EEC funds to tackle transport projects which will benefit Europe as a whole.
The paper will be submitted to EEC transport ministers at their December meeting in Brussels.