How railway stations can transform urban mobility and the public realm: The stakeholders’ perspective

Railway stations are massive infrastructures through which people, products, materials, and energy flow every day. They usually gather a multitude of functions and provide a wide range of services to users based on their respective specific features. Thus, railway stations have the potential to play a critical role in reshaping our cities in a sustainable manner by facilitating intermodality, green and active modes of transport and logistics, and by gathering proximity services. In this reshaping process, implementing effective and seamless mobility, as well as the proximity of services, are key challenges. However, no urban transformation process can take place without the involvement and commitment of the respective stakeholders. This paper aims to form an understanding of the views these stakeholders have towards the potential of railway stations transformation, for the broad European context, to carve out first paths towards actually achieving that transformation. This study analyses a wide range of inputs and considerations made during a series of workshops held in 2021 by the EIT Urban Mobility where experts from a wide range of fields exchanged their experiences and ideas around the topics of urban mobility and public realm. In this process, railway stations emerged as a key player to meet the challenges of cities’ sustainable development. After analysing their potential and exploring policy obstacles that are currently hampering such a transformation, this paper suggests a series of recommendations to better exploit railway stations, gained from the stakeholders’ perspective.