Cooperative Business Structures for Green Transport Corridors

In its White Paper on “A Sustainable Future of Transport”, the European Commission promoted the idea of green transport corridors (GTCs) by establishing trans-shipment routes with concentration of freight traffic between major hubs. GTCs reduce environmental and climate impact of the traffic on these relatively long distances of transport while increasing safety and efficiency with the application of sustainable logistics solutions. The Baltic Sea Region (BSR) enjoys a vanguard position in the development and realisation of green transport concepts within Europe. Already the GTC definition of the European Commission emphasized the need for a fair and non-discriminatory access to corridors and trans-shipment facilities that enable all customers to participate in the corridor and make use of publicly available benefits. Research results of GTC initiatives revealed that cultural issues, cooperation quality and governance structures play a crucial role in the acceptance and success of the GTC concept. This paper highlights the current status and discussions on business and ownership models for GTCs and investigates the research question if and to which extent can cooperative concepts be used as a base principle for GTC governance. The authors participated in some of the most important GTC projects in the BSR, which provides them in terms of methodology easy access to literature reviews, secondary data analysis, expert interviews and surveys covering the entire BSR.