23. Calls on the Commission to submit a report on best practices for an EU-wide uniform benchmarking system for urban transport, covering public passenger transport as well as motorised private transport, and to press ahead with the development and promotion of innovative approaches favouring alternatives to private transport for short journeys within towns and cities;

C. whereas short sea shipping, which accounts for more than 40% of intra-Community traffic, forms an integral part of the European transport system given that short sea shipping means the movement of cargo and passengers by sea or inland waterway European ports or between those ports and ports situated in non-European countries with a coastline on the enclosed seas bordering Europe,

It reads: ‘whereas short sea shipping, which accounts for more than 40% of intra-Community traffic, forms an integral part of the European transport system given that short sea shipping means the movement of cargo and passengers by sea or inland waterways between European ports or between those ports and ports situated in non-European countries with a coastline on the enclosed seas bordering Europe,’

This Regulation establishes a financing instrument, hereinafter referred to as the "Marco Polo Programme", or "the Programme", the objective being to reduce congestion, to improve the environmental performance of the transport system and to enhance intermodal transport, thereby contributing to an efficient and sustainable transport system, for the period from 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2010 in order to achieve, by the end of the Programme, a traffic shift of the expected yearly aggregate increase of international road freight traff ...[+++]ic, measured in tonne-kilometres, to short sea shipping, rail and inland waterways or to a combination of modes of transport in which road journeys are as short as possible.

25. Considers that short sea shipping is an environmentally friendly and safe alternative to road transport and therefore believes it is essential to increase the proportion of freight transport accounted for by short sea shipping; calls on the national governments to take the requisite measures to encourage the use of short sea shipping, for instance by providing investment support to short sea shipping projects which can demonstrate the importance of short sea shipping in effective intermodal transport systems and by removing all b ...[+++]arriers; calls on the Commission to grant start-up aid from the existing European funds to promote short sea shipping and to frame the planned combined transport support measures in such a way that they can apply easily to short sea shipping;

12. Believes that short sea shipping is an environment friendly and safe alternative to road transport and therefore that an increase in the proportion of goods transported by short sea shipping is essential; calls on national governments to introduce effective measures to increase the proportion of goods carried by short sea shipping, including investment aid to launch short sea shipping projects demonstrating the contribution which this transport mode can make to the overall efficiency of multimodal transport systems and the removal of all kinds of barriers; calls on the Commission also to promote short sea activities by providing some launching aid from the already existing European funds and to ...[+++]organise schemes to assist combined transport in such a way as to enable them to be applied without difficulties to short sea shipping;