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Rok Brišnik, Member of the CIPRA Youth Council (c) private

With the schools closed, we have realised that young people are our future. By stopping public transport we realised that, without it, traffic chaos ensues. By closing borders, we have learnt the importance of connectivity beyond national or regional borders. AlpTick or Alpine Ticket covers all of these three features. AlpTick is a CYC project where we are developing an inter-regional youth ticket for public passenger transport.

Besides AlpTick's primary task – the ticket – it includes other perspectives. The AlpTick ticket would show young people that they are an important part of the sustainable transport policy future. It will actively involve young people, who will set the guidelines for sustainable development in public transport. At present, they do not travel much by public transport because it is relatively expensive, complicated and disconnected. AlpTick will change this. AlpTick is not only going to connect enthusiastic young Europeans, however: it will also connect Alpine regions and countries. At the moment, there is no ticket in Europe that connects a specific macro-region, such as the Alps. The Alpine region therefore has an excellent opportunity to become the first macro-regional area in Europe with a single public transport ticket. As the first in Europe, AlpTick would gain enormous weight in the eyes of green policy institutions at European, national and regional level. But linking such a large area, located in 7 different countries, is not easy. The large number of carriers, uncoordinated timetables and various mobile apps make this task difficult, which is why unification should be tackled from the bottom up. This “baby steps” approach is being followed by LinkingAlps, where a project of timetable integration between border regions in Italy and Switzerland has been launched. Unified timetables would create the opportunity to develop a single mobile app for public transport in the Alps. Currently, each Alpine country has its own: in Switzerland, more than 90% of the population uses it, in Slovenia only one tenth. In addition to the timetable, the app could also have an online AlpTick ticket. This would give our ticket another green badge.

AlpTick is well on its way to success. Due to the broad scope of the task, CYC has approached the multi-faceted integration process at a lower level. As already mentioned, AlpTick is more than just a ticket for public transport: it is a chance to connect the Alps, a chance to connect public transport and a chance to connect Youth. And that is how all stakeholders should see it. The only question now is: How and when will you become part of this connecting story?