Innovative and Sustainable Approaches to Urban Waterborne Transport: Insights from Gdynia Port City

In order to face current challenges, cities need to introduce and enhance resilient, sustainable and innovative decarbonisation policies and strategies. This also includes coastal urban areas, suffering from particularly heavy congestion, where local and regional authorities and other stakeholders should promote novel environmental-friendly, socially accepted and economically effective mobility patterns. Thus, the paper presents urban waterborne transport development prerequisites and conditions taking as a case study Gdynia located at the Baltic Sea in Poland. Its aim is to explore the tailor-made possibilities and solutions to create a ferry connection recommended in order to enhance sustainable and innovative mobility in the analysed city port area. The study focused on the selected variants investigating possibilities for allowing vessels with alternative fuels, appropriate length and draft parameters to approach existing locations. The paper is based on scientific papers, available industry reports, feasibility studies, urban policies and cities current experiences in planning and operating water transport. Urban waterborne transport development requires an interdisciplinary and multilevel perspective and approach so that future urban strategies contain a complex set of goals and actions to be successfully implemented by decision makers.