The 4th Technical Meeting and Steering Committee Meeting of the OPTI-UP project was organized by the Ljubljana Traffic and Transport Institute in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.
At the one-day event, on 15 April 2026, the Central European partnership of the project evaluated the pilot actions implemented in six Central European cities. These actions focused on the optimization of public transport routes (locations: Osijek, Paks), on demand-driven public transport solutions (cities of Modena, Grosuplje), and on the transition of existing bus fleets to alternative propulsion (cities of Český Krumlov, Pécs).
The lessons to be learned from these are multifaceted. Locally, i.e. in the affected settlements, the pilot actions facilitated better access to public transport and provided a unique, settlement-specific example. In this way, they also contributed to planning the future of local public transport. Local stakeholders (public transport companies, city authorities, bus drivers, and public transport experts) were also basically satisfied with the pilot actions. The public transport actions of the six cities contributed to lower emissions and increased the number of passengers using public transport. The long-term sustainability of the actions also depends largely on the available financial resources and long-term public transport planning.
The partners also reviewed the OPTI-UP urban planning-public transport “tool”, which supports settlement leaders planning the development and transformation of local public transport by taking into account 28 aspects. This assistance is fundamentally based on good and bad solutions in Central Europe identified based on a two-year exchange of experiences between the six OPTI-UP cities.
At the end of the project meeting, the Slovenian hosts presented the national flagship project, which is entitled Ljubljana Passenger Center. The investment under implementation also involves the establishment of a completely renovated, multimodal train station, bus station and micromobility center, as well as the construction of a modern traffic organization and passenger information system in the heart of the country.
The South Transdanubian Regional Innovation Agency was accompanied to Slovenia by two managers of Tüke Busz Zrt. from Pécs due to their professional involvement, and we would like to thank them for their active participation.
The next international meeting of the OPTI-UP project, which will also be the project closing event, will take place in Zagreb on October 20, 2026.
The OPTI-UP project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and Hungary within the Interreg Central Europe Programme
