25 September 2018 | Brussels, Belgium

Dominique Riquet, Member of the European Parliament, hosted the event ‘What place for the maintenance of infrastructure in the next EU MFF’ to discuss how the upcoming EU budget could contribute to make road transport infrastructures more efficient, cleaner and modern.

ERF, FIEC and Caisse des Dépôts Group co-organised the conference that gathered representatives from the road sector, financing institutions, infrastructure managers, national governments and European Commission. Panelists exchanged good practices and discussed how to invest funds more effectively and coherently, especially in a period with higher traffic volumes and huge backlog in maintenance. that is accelerating a prompt ageing of our infrastructures.

A considerable part of the road network in Europe was built decades ago, thus reaching now a critical age and creating real hazards for users. In addition, scarcity in public funding has originated an unprecedented degradation of the condition of the network mainly in local or regional roads and bridges. The increase of financial resources, especially in the next Connecting Europe Facility, Cohesion and Regional Development funds, represents the immediate and urgent solution for preservation and upgrading operations.

Participants agreed on the need of a comprehensive approach to preserve the transport infrastructure. This incorporates principles of asset management, planning, prioritisation and sound strategies of maintenance. New ways of financing and governance could also facilitate deployment of European policies. These ways should be based on circular economy, respect the environment, rely on research and innovation, digitalisation, take advantage of industry competitiveness while simultaneously improving mobility for people and transport of goods.

In the view of current inter-institutional negotiations for the future budget, the road sector calls on the European Parliament, Council and Commission to consider infrastructure spending as a key investment to achieve main political priorities for a better Europe.

12 June 2018 | Brussels, Belgium

The European Union Road Federation (ERF) and the Federation of European Motorcyclists’ Associations (FEMA) have published a joint position paper, called ‘Improving infrastructure safety for powered two-wheelers’.

Only in 2017 power two-wheelers fatalities (motorcycles and mopeds) counted for 17% of the total road victims, while accounting only for 1,8%  of the total traffic flow. Both ERF and FEMA strongly believe that road safety for motorcyclists can be improved by looking at the design of road infrastructure.

Basic and low-cost preventive measures such as the installation of motorcycle protection systems on guardrails, maintaining the skid resistance of pavement markings and ensuring that roads surfaces are properly maintained can make an important contribution to the safety of riders and help achieve better progress towards reaching the EU’s goal of reducing fatalities by 50 percent by 2020 in line with the objective set out in the Road Safety Action Program 2011-2020.

ERF and FEMA encourage the European Commission to include specific measures focussed on motorcycle protection infrastructure for the coming road safety framework 2020-2030. Both organisations are open to cooperate by sharing expertise and technical knowledge with policymakers which can be transformed in positive measures to develop a safer mobility in Europe.

ERF:

Established in 1998, the European Union Road Federation (ERF) is non-profit association which defends the role of roads as a sine que non for Europe’s socio-economic prosperity. With more than 60 members, it acts as a true platform for dialogue and research on issues related to safe mobility.

Contact person: Christophe Nicodème, ERF Director General

www.erf.be 

FEMA:

The Federation of European Motorcyclists Associations (FEMA) represents European motorcyclists and aims to promote, protect and preserve motorcycling. Its mission is to promote riders’ interests and defend riders’ rights throughout Europe and globally

Contact person: Dolf Willigers, FEMA General Secretary

www.fema-online.eu

27 March 2018 | Nice, France

The final conference of HEALROAD was held on 27 March within the framework of the Pavement Preservation and Recycling Summit (PPRS2018) in Nice (France).

Partners of the consortium unveiled final results of the research which were in line with the objective of the PPRS: maintenance, modernisation, adaptation of roads & streets for tomorrow’s mobility.

HEALROAD had a dedicated session gathering more than 100 participants. Initial presentations from the consortium described the analysis of the asphalt healing technique at the laboratory and the industrial upscaling and demonstration at the duraBASt facility in Germany.

Partners focused on the last phase of the research which started in July 2017 with the construction of the HEALROAD section and continued until February 2018 with the monitoring of the self-healing technique performance. Concretely, the final phase of the project consisted on the deployment of the accelerated loading test (Mobile Load Simulator MLS30) that simulated a real traffic flow scenario able to create the first cracks. At that moment, the road was ready to initiate the HEALROAD induction heating process to self-heal initial cracks with the SGS machine brought from The Netherlands.

In parallel to the tests on the road, cost and environmental impact of the HEALROAD asphalt mixtures was also analysed and final results were unveiled to the public in Nice.

Regarding the economic performance, analysis concluded that despite a slight increase of initial costs in +2%, road managers could benefit of lower costs for renewal measures in between -27% to -21%. Additionally, costs caused by extra travel time, fuel consumption, C02 emissions and accidents in sum can be reduced between -11% / -24 %. In total, it is estimated a total saving of costs in around 4%.

The environmental analysis compared a HEALROAD section with a conventional one  considering a 30-years analysis period and 6 different stages of the road life: production, road construction, leaching, maintenance, congestion and end-of-life. In total, the HEALROAD technology was proved to have a better performance against a conventional mixture in 14 of the 17 midpoint impacts and in all the endpoint impacts.

16 March 2017 | Paris, France

The French Senate Commission for land use planning and sustainable development has just released an informative report on the current condition of the motorway and road infrastructures in France. This report reveals the trend towards a degradation of the networks and warns about the mid- and long-term consequences.

According to Senator Hervé Maurey “once the degradation is proved, it becomes more costly and complicated to maintain the network, as the railway example has demonstrated: the State must therefore react in a quick and responsible manner in order to prevent the road network from experiencing a similar fate”. This report also contains the minutes of the roundtable organised on 8th February, which gathered representatives from the most structuring road networks – the State, the motorway companies, the Departments – as well as road sector industry and road users. This roundtable confirmed the absolute necessity of increasing the resources dedicated to the maintenance of the road network.

15 February 2016 | Paris, France

Alain Vidalies, the French State Secretary in charge of Transport, Sea and Fisheries, announced an investment plan for 2016 concerning the maintenance of the national roads and waterways. The French government intends to allocate an additional €150 million to the €300 million already planned in operations for upgrading national roads.

Mr Vidalies decided to make maintenance a priority, as he believes roads and waterways infrastructure to be a vital part of the French economy.

Investing in the maintenance of these networks is will immediately result to new job positions, and it will generate further business activity, both for companies and authorities.

In 2015, Alain Vidalies had launched an initial investment plan of € 100 million in existing networks, thus over 150 projects were then launched. The investment plan for 2016 is the highest in the last 10 years.