VISION: Road Transport in Europe 2025 - FEHRL

2
B ecause
PREFACE
roads are so vital to Europe and because the next twenty years offer
profound opportunities and challenges for their development, we need to
think very carefully about how we can make greatest progress. FEHRL therefore
decided to draw up a Vision for 2025 to guide the thinking and to help focus
actions. This report summarises that Vision. It has been developed from the input
of a Working Group of representatives from nine of the FEHRL establishments, and
in conjunction with the Secretariat.
All visions of the future involve speculation. How well they work depends on how
informed that speculation is, how well the inevitable uncertainties are recognised,
and how robust the assumptions are on which it is based. We have therefore taken
some trouble to lay out the reasoning and to explain how we conclude what the
future is most likely to be. We believe the result is robust and reasonable, in that it
concentrates on conclusions that are common to a range of scenarios. Time will
tell.
It is very clear that if we are to realise the potential benefits of a number of key
developments - which could be huge - we need first to gain an essential
knowledge base. Road transport in 2025 will depend strongly on how well the
policies and developments of coming years are actioned. The knowledge base is
on the critical path and is key to our future.
Rod Kimber
Chairman of the Working Group
Director of Science and Engineering
Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), UK
Ton Maagdenberg
Vice-chairman of the Working Group
Dienst Weg- en Waterboukunde (DWW), Netherlands