6 February 2023 – The Predjama Sustainable Mobility Plan has been designed as part of the project called Sustainable Mobility Management at the Tourist Location Predjama (Predjama Sustainable), which is implemented under the programme Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. The Mobility Plan outlines challenges and solutions to reducing heavy traffic and congestion due to high numbers of visitors that flock to the village of Predjama, especially in peak season. The Mobility Plan is set to gradually start this year.
Municipality of Postojna aims to reduce motorized traffic in the wider area of municipality to contribute to climate change mitigation. Predjama, a popular tourist location which has seen a threefold increase in visits in the last 10 years, is one of the targeted areas that will benefit from a traffic solution. Due to an insufficient number of parking spaces, expanded tourist offer and large numbers of visitors, the peak season usually faces a parking chaos, which calls for a sustainable solution that involves a reduced number of cars at the location but retains visitor numbers.
The mobility plan is one of the main deliverables of the project and the springboard for a pilot implementation of key measures that will help change travel habits of visitors and local population. The project brings together Municipality of Postojna as Project Promoter, Institute for Spatial Policies and Municipality of Strand from Norway. The project partners were joined by the Bukovje local community and the interested residents of Bukovje and Predjama; they all joined forces to develop the mobility plan. The document preparation process was all-inclusive – workshops, interviews and surveys were carried out to collect the views, proposals and needs of other residents of Predjama, Bukovje and neighbouring villages, local associations, Institute Knowledge Postojna, Regional Development Agency Green Karst and destinations facing similar traffic issues.
The mobility plan was prepared on the basis of the presentation of the project to the residents of Bukovje local community, the study visit to Norway and the creation of a working group. Later, a situation analysis and a location-based accessibility analysis were conducted, starting points for the mobility plan identified, survey, interviews, field visit with residents carried out and challenges and goals identified. After this all-round analysis, four different visions were formulated and presented at a public debate, to the project partners and the working group. For each of the four visions, a set of measures, the corresponding timeline and the financial framework were proposed. The measures were approved by the working group, the mayor of the Municipality of Postojna and the director of the Postojna Cave Park, which later followed in the design, approval and adoption of the plan.
The mobility plan consists of four actions that are broken down into five key areas or so-called pillars:
- walking and cycling,
- public passenger transport,
- motorized traffic,
- information and promotion, and
- management and planning
that will all be gradually implemented this year.