All Transport
Urban Planning and Travel Behaviour
Roundtable Report, Policy Insights,
19 December 2022
- Improve co-ordination between transport planning and other policy areas.
- Foster effective metropolitan governance of transport.
- Develop and implement sustainable urban mobility plans.
- Move beyond planning based on demand forecasts towards vision-led, strategic transport planning.
- Use relevant indicators to monitor the performance of transport systems.
- Rectify biases in policies that favour car travel over alternative transport options.
- Prioritise investments that improve the use of low-range and sustainable transport modes.
- Reallocate road space to sustainable, efficient and safe transport modes.
The Freight Space Race: Curbing the Impact of Freight Deliveries in Cities
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
5 December 2022
- Manage curb space with a focus on the needs of both passengers and goods transport.
- Apply access restrictions for delivery vehicles in urban areas while considering business practices.
- Use more logistics data to better monitor and manage freight flows.
Monitoring Progress in Urban Road Safety: 2022 Update
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
16 October 2022
- Ensure consistent collection of reliable urban road safety data.
- Create urban traffic observatories that collect both general mobility data and road safety data.
- Set ambitious reduction targets for the number of traffic crash casualties in cities.
- Focus on protecting vulnerable road users on urban streets.
- Measure crash risks for vulnerable road users with appropriate indicators.
- Adopt an integrated urban mobility plan based on Safe System principles.
Decarbonising Europe’s Trucks: How to Minimise Cost Uncertainty
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
4 September 2022
- Ensure that policies to promote direct electrification of trucks remain technology-neutral.
- Launch targeted studies and pilot projects to assess the merits of electric road systems for road freight decarbonisation.
- Further investigate decarbonisation technologies for particularly challenging road freight applications.
- Introduce policies that help zero-emission vehicles become cost-competitive sooner.
- Accelerate the deployment of zero-emission vehicle infrastructure.
- Strengthen regulations that make trucks more energy-efficient.
Performance of Maritime Logistics
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
11 July 2022
- Improve competition monitoring in container shipping.
- Reconsider the competition arrangements for liner shipping.
- Focus regulatory attention on fair competition in door-to-door container transport.
- Increase transparency of container shipping rates and charges.
- Collect performance information on the containerised transport chain.
- Secure the strategic value of container shipping.
- Charge users of public maritime infrastructure more to increase cost coverage.
The Safe System Approach in Action
Research Report, Policy Insights,
29 June 2022
- Commit to a long-term Safe System initiative
- Build Safe System initiatives on data and evidence of effectiveness
- Start at a manageable level of activity and then scale up
- Build capacity for practical implementation of the Safe System approach, especially in low- and middle-income countries
- Use pilot projects to further test and develop the Safe System framework
- Use the framework to assess projects, organisations and policies, identify gaps, and plan effective strategies
Mode Choice in Freight Transport
Research Report, Policy Insights,
27 February 2022
- Apply integrated policy approaches to create coherent interventions across freight-transport modes.
- Focus on mitigating external costs associated with each freight mode, rather than on modal shift as such.
- Improve the evaluation of policy interventions’ effectiveness to better inform measures that influence the choice of freight transport modes.
- Create fair competition between freight transport modes.
Streets That Fit: Re-allocating Space for Better Cities
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
16 February 2022
- Adopt meaningful indicators for how urban street space is used.
- Re-allocate street space to account for diverse uses and users.
- Prioritise people over vehicles when allocating street space.
- Explore the benefits of dynamically re-allocating certain street spaces.
- Adopt Safe System principles to guide the re-allocation of street space.
Improving Safety for Motorcycle, Scooter and Moped Riders
Research Report, Policy Insights,
7 October 2015
- The powered two-wheeler population is increasing and plays a significant role in mobility.
- Powered two-wheeler (PTW) riders are at far greater risk than car drivers.
- Poor perception and control are frequent failures that lead to PTW crashes.
- A Safe System approach is required to improve the safety of PTWs.
- The helmet is the most important source of protection against severe injuries and death.
- Advances in car technology can also bring positive safety benefits to PTW users. There are a number of new technologies, such as forward collision warning, blind spot information and vulnerable road user protection systems, which can prevent collisions, including those with PTW riders, pedestrians and cyclists.
Road Infrastructure Safety Management
IRTAD, Policy Insights,
6 October 2015
- Benchmark road infrastructure against good practices in other countries.
- Implement new minimum safety standards for road infrastructure.
- Continue evaluation and research to quantify safety impacts of planning decisions.
- Implement suitable Road Infrastructure Safety Management procedures for each stage of road development including planning design, pre-opening and full operation.
- Make Road Infrastructure Safety Management procedures legally binding.
- Involve both road and health authorities when developing road accident data bases.
- Assure adequate institutional management capacity and investment levels.
- Use existing tools and guidelines; adopt second-best solutions where state-of-the-art solutions are not feasible.
- Identify the Road Safety Infrastructure Management procedures that fit specific needs and understand barriers to implementation.
- Share good practices of Road infrastructure Safety Management procedures and intervention measures.
- Monitor the safety performance of road infrastructure.
- Develop self-explaining roads.
Why Does Road Safety Improve When Economic Times Are Hard?
IRTAD, Policy Insights,
5 October 2015
- There is clear evidence that when economic growth declines, and particularly when unemployment increases, road safety improves.
- The financial and economic crises which started in 2007 were accompanied by marked falls in annual numbers of road deaths in most OECD countries.
- It is important to understand how much of the accelerated reduction in numbers of deaths during the downturn that began in 2008 was attributable to the changed economic conditions.
- The economic downturn in 2009-10 may well have contributed to about two-thirds of the decrease in fatalities from 2008.
- The recent downturn has had repercussions on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and unemployment rate and has influenced the number of road deaths through a reduction in vehicle kilometres driven, especially by young men and by heavy goods vehicles, a reduction in speeding and in drink-driving, and a reduction in learning to drive by young men.
- Policy makers need to take careful account of these results when setting road safety targets and when designing road safety strategies for the future.
The Impact of Mega-Ships
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
30 April 2015
- Cost savings from bigger container ships are decreasing.
- The transport costs due to larger ships could be substantial.
- Supply chain risks related to mega-container ships are rising.
- Public policies need to better take account of this and act accordingly.
- Further increase of maximum container ship size would raise ransport costs.
Drivers of Logistics Performance: A Case Study of Turkey
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
30 April 2015
- Policy actions creating the highest improvement in the logistics performance vary for different income levels.
- Reducing the variability of customs clearance time is an important element for improving the efficiency of border crossing procedures.
- Capacity management plays a vital role in infrastructure efficiency.
- Intermodal transport systems, including good access to roads, terminals and seaport channels, are fundamental for a high-quality transport infrastructure.
- A successful logistics industry is essential in providing high quality logistics services.
- Resilience-improving policies and investments are necessary.
Urban Mobility System Upgrade
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
31 March 2015
- Self-driving vehicles could change public transport as we currently know it.
- The potential impact of self-driving shared fleets on urban mobility is significant. It will be shaped by policy choices and deployment options.
- Active management is needed to lock in the benefits of freed space.
- Improvements in road safety are almost certain. Environmental benefits will depend on vehicle technology.
- New vehicle types and business models will be required.
- Public transport, taxi operations and urban transport governance will have to adapt.
- Mixing fleets of shared self-driving vehicles and privately-owned cars will not deliver the same benefits as a full TaxiBot/AutoVot fleet - but it still remains attractive.