25 October 2018 | Dubrovnik, Croatia
The city Dubrovnik in Croatia hosted a highly successful gathering of 500 transport stakeholders on October 22-24 to deepen the understanding of regional mobility challenges and achieve consensus on key policy, investment, and planning measures.
Held at the invitation of key representative organizations, the Conference was formally opened by H.E Oleg Butković, Minister of the Sea, Transport & Infrastructure, Republic of Croatia in the presence of ministers of transport and senior road agency executives from Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Bulgaria and Serbia.
“Croatia is an important gateway to Europe” noted Mr. Josip Skoric, CEO of Hrvatske Ceste and President of Via Vita. “We connect two shores of the Adriatic Sea and represent the deepest cut of the Mediterranean into the European continent. Croatia was therefore ideally located to host discussions between the region’s experts of the road and traffic sector”.
“Significant challenges remain to improve the safety, efficiency, ecological sustainability of our road network” according to Tomislav Josip Mlinarić, Dean of the Faculty of Transport & Traffic Sciences, University of Zagreb. “And these are exactly the topics which our Faculty has successfully investigated through our world-class research facilities”.
Against a backdrop of significant connectivity investments across South East Europe, the Conference featured 20 cross-sector panels on topics ranging from resilient infrastructure design to effective road traffic safety policies all designed to ensure the value of roads to society is maximized.
“With 2 years remaining under the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety, the devastating social and economic impacts of this epidemic can no longer be ignored” Rik Nuyttens, President of the European Union Road Federation (ERF) underscored. “It truly is time for results. The region has an important opportunity and responsibility to examine ways to prevent what has become a global public health crisis”.
“The European Road Conference achieved another of its key objectives to look at how innovation is being leveraged to deliver smart, energy-efficient and resilient highways.” noted IRF Chairman Eng. Abdullah Al-Mogbel. “Conferences such as this one will help us deploy a new generation of roads that assist the transition to autonomous mobility and environmental sustainability”.
