ROADS FOR THE FUTURE
Speakers at the recently held 3rd European Road Congress looked at ways of preparing infrastructure to cater for future mobility demands. These demands were among others formulated as a substantial reduction of road accidents within Europe. It can be achieved through implementing more technology into the vehicles, which will make them costlier.
The symposium was organised by the European Union Road Federation (ERF), the Brussels Programme Centre of the International Road Federation (IRF), under the title 'Making Roads Ready for the Future'.
Delegates reaffirmed that only placing road infrastructure at the top of the agenda would result in the sector matching the tough expectations placed on it by society.
In the future, roads will have to be more resistant, more 'intelligent', cheaper to build and to maintain and ever safer for their users.
The congress heard that it is only an efficient and reliable road infrastructure that will allow citizens throughout Europe to become truly "mobile", something which will lead to cascading socio-economic benefits for society as a whole.
The congress, which was divided in four thematic sessions dealing with the topics of road safety, intelligent transport systems/smarter roads, greener roads and fairer roads, brought together the top decision-makers in the sector to debate the hottest issues and offer ideas over the role of the road infrastructure sector in the years to come. Halving the number of road crash victims by 2010 is a political and global commitment and is part of the road safety policy in the European Union, being a shared responsibility among numerous stakeholders. An integrated approach involves user behaviour, vehicle safety and road infrastructure safety, according to the assembly.
According to Jack Short, secretary of the International Road Forum, even stabilising global transport emissions at the 2050 horizon requires a major conceptual shift in technologies and policy. At the same time, traffic growth patterns necessarily reflect the many functions transport plays in our societies today, he said.
"In other words, we need to consider ways of decoupling traffic growth and energy demand while at the same time not losing sight of other transport policy objectives such as traffic safety and congestion. This is the key political message that emerged at the recent meeting of the International Transport Forum in Leipzig (Germany). The path to achieving this ambitious goal is neither known nor agreed at this moment.”
Cost effective advances in vehicle technologies could reduce emissions by 30%, while even more ambitious targets are feasible in the longer term through improvements in battery technologies. Existing transport assets, like public transport, need to be maintained, upgraded and renewed. This is costly, but benefits future generations.
"Some think that sustainable transport means spending less. The opposite is true. We need to spend, selectively and wisely, to ensure new transport capacity is built and maintained in a sustainable way," he concluded
