A well connected public transport network will become a crucial element in preserving liveability and economic activities in remote Alpine areas. The Alpine Region suffers from an unbalanced demographic trend, whereby cities and peri-Alpine areas grow constantly in population while remote areas suffer from ageing and depopulation. In order to guarantee the connectivity within the Region and to improve cross-border services it is thus important to identify missing links in the existing public transport network, to identify relevant bottlenecks and to improve the quality of services, especially across borders. High-quality and well-connected public transport services are also an important factor for tourism mobility: tourists will only leave their car at home and travel to the Alps by public transport if good services and easily accessible information is available at the destination. One current objective of some Alpine regions is thus the development of a cross-border travel information tool, which integrates all available information on public transport services and, in the long term, allows an integrated ticketing system.

Some remote provinces of Tyrol that are economical­ly less developed remain poorly connected by public transport. For Example there are no direct rail connections from Reutte and Lienz to Innsbruck, making travel times by public transport much more time consuming compared to the private car. Thus, the con­nection of these areas will become a priority for future public transport development.

Italy and Slovenia are not connected with public transport services. Most notably, the railway link on the line Venice-Trieste-Ljubljana was cancelled in April 2008, due to different national safety regula­tions. Therefore, the reactivation of a cross-border connection is a priority to ensure reliable and sustainable public transport options, to be achieved through close cooperation with the relevant stake­holders at local and national levels.

Easily accessible and transparent information on public transport and other sustainable mobility services is a crucial precondition for incentivizing modal shift of passenger transport. Especially for journeys crossing national or even regional borders it is however difficult to get information on public transport and other sustainable mobility services in one integrated platform, especially for journeys crossing national or even regional borders. A border crossing, single information system would make travelling by public transport much easier and more attractive. This should also include additional information services on shared mobility and soft modes, accurate real-time information, information on tariffs and ticketing as well as the environmental footprint including CO2 emissions and air pollution. Some Alpine regions as well as major public transport providers are currently joining forces in a new project to develop such an integrated platform.

The central region around the regional capital Graz is destination for many comuters living in Slovenia. Dispite the existing railway line most of them are comuting by car, because the cross the border connections are very limited and are not linked up with the connections within Slovenia. Bus services cross the border operate mainly on long-distance transport and leave the short-distance cross border transport beside. To strengthen the cohesion between the EU member states cross border services in public transport should be much more intensified.