Integrating public and private initiatives

Summary

The organisation Fileplan was established to facilitate intensive cooperation between the regional government, private companies and institutions, the police, and the Ministry of Traffic and Transport at national level.

Implementing sustainable mobility

One of the main objectives of the Regional Plan for Traffic and Transport in the Rotterdam Region is to strengthen the city’s position as a major European port. Congestion represents a significant barrier to accessibility, thus the Fileplan concept was introduced in order to improve accessibility.

Behind Fileplan lies the conviction that a shared view on mobility is needed in order to solve congestion problems. The main goal is to integrate the efforts of different road authorities via dialogue and cooperation. The annual “Fileplan Breakfast” is a high-profile network meeting, with the participation of the Minister of Transport of the Netherlands, where ideas and knowledge can be shared in open debate in a relaxed atmosphere.

The specific goals were to:

• organise two interactive workshops with users and road authorities;
• stimulate a change in modal split via communication campaigns and websites;
• stimulate structural measures to enhance the region’s accessibility based on research into bottlenecks in the road network;
• reduce the negative impacts of the transport sector in the region; and
• improve cooperation among relevant actors in the city to jointly work on accessibility and safety.

Progress

Among the activities that took place were:

• a Fileplan breakfast meeting in February 2004, on the theme “unlimited networking”, which attracted more than 200 representatives of road authorities; national, regional and local governments; lobby groups; and private companies;
• the preparation of a reference manual on train and metro stations, including an assessment tool for the quality of such sites;
• start-up meetings with relevant knowledge institutions;
• the launching of a Fileplan website; and
• the coordination of stakeholders for a pilot project in the northern part of the Rotterdam region.

Outcomes

On the basis of continuous evaluation of activities and results, it became clear that a new impulse was needed. It was therefore decided to develop a successor to Fileplan, and in February 2005 a new brand name, Nexus, was launched. The main idea was to improve relations with the business sector and with knowledge institutes.