26 September 2018 | Brussels, Belgium

The European Union Road Federation (ERF) and the Federation of European Motorcyclists’ Associations (FEMA) organised a breakfast event “‘Road Infrastructure Safety – The Motorcyclists’ Vision”. The event took place at the European Parliament and was hosted by MEP Wim van de Camp.

In the coming months, road safety will be at the EU agenda with the revision of the Road Infrastructure Safety Directive and the preparation of the coming Road Safety Action Programme 2020-2030. In this sense, the ERF and FEMA have launched a joint position paper ‘Improving infrastructure safety for powered two-wheelers’ that calls for specific measures focused on motorcycle protection.

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.

In his introduction, Mr Van de Camp referred to the social cost of accidents that authorities need to take into consideration, as well as how responsibility is shared among involved parties in case of an accident.

Afterwards, Dolf Willigers, FEMA General Secretary, gave a presentation regarding the challenges that motorcyclists’ face in terms of infrastructure. More specifically, Mr Willigers pointed out that lack of proper design and poor maintenance can have fatal consequences for vulnerable road users, motorcyclists included.

Following the motorcyclist’s perspective, the ERF President, Rik Nuyttens, addressed  a presentation on how the infrastructure can be adapted to better accommodate the needs of the above mentioned road user groups by improving signs, markings, bariers and pavements.

The last part of the event was dedicated to an exchange of views between the participants. The main point made during this discussion was that although maintenance is important, this is mostly funded by regional and national authorities, therefore it is important that these authorities are constantly informed about the needs of road users, especially the vulnerable ones. Another important element, which participants agreed on, was that harmonised road equipment is extremely important when it comes to preventing road accidents and thus preventing road fatalities.

ERF and FEMA will continue the awareness campaign during the coming months presenting the document in specialised fora, conferences and to other stakeholders involved in road safety.

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.

27 February 2018| Milan, Italy

The ALTERPAVE Project demonstrated how road constructions can reduce the use of natural resources by introducing alternative materials such as RAP and by-products in asphalt mixes. The demonstration took place on a real road in Milan (Italy).

The consortium, co-funded by INFRAVATION and combining EU and USA expertise, initiated the project in 2015. The technical team composed of five partners has developed an integrated approach for the sustainable construction of roads focusing on circular economy and considering the whole life cycle of the infrastructure.

The final workshop gathered experts from industry, research centres, universities and governments who will also be the main beneficiaries of the final results of the project. Presentations focussed on the description of the project, including the initial research on the laboratory by University of Cantabria (Spain) and Western Research Institute (USA), technical validation by VTI (Sweden) and Impressa Bacchi (Italy) and the final sustainable and environmental analysis by ACCIONA (Spain).

ALTERPAVE, together with other research initiatives, shows a clear commitment from the road infrastructure sector to improve its environmental performance while maintaining highest level of quality of the pavement for the end user. In addition, the industry fully supports this vision which is helping to modernise and adapt the sector to new socio-economic and environmental patterns.