dto annual report 06.indd - National Transport Authority

Dublin Transportation Office Annual Report & Accounts 2006< Participation in national and international strategictransportation conferences and meetingsAs a key strategic planning agency, the DTO is frequentlyinvited to provide speakers at international events, and tointernational audiences. During 2006 the DTO addressedthe IBEC 3 Intelligent Transport Systems Conference inLondon and the POLIS Annual General Conference.The DTO helped the Swedish Trade Council organisea Road Safety Seminar in Dublin in May 2006.In addition, the DTO CEO and executive hostedvisiting delegations from transportation and landuse practitioners and students from NorthernIreland, Finland, the UK, China and Austria.< Urban Transport Benchmarking InitiativeThe three-year European Commission funded Urban TransportBenchmarking Initiative, in which Dublin participated, wasconcluded in August 2006. This unique project benchmarkeddifferent aspects of the transport systems of 45 participatingEuropean cities, with themed working groups eachresearching individual urban transport topics in great depth.< DTO WebsiteThe Walk and Cycle Journey Planner feature of theDTO website was enhanced during 2006 to include:= a new feature identifying the CO 2emissionssavings generated by choosing to walk or cycle aparticular route as opposed to taking the car= new, printable local area maps for each ofthe Luas and DART stations in Dublin.The Journey Planner is a very popular feature of ourwebsite, receiving over 8,000 visits per month in 2006.It can plot out a handy printable point-to-point map, withinstructions, for journeys between any two specifiedaddresses in the Dublin Metropolitan Area. It alsocalculates the trip time, calories burned – on foot orby bicycle – and CO 2emissions saved, per journey.Other popular pages and features on the DTO’s websiteinclude the Platform for Change policy document, the publiccontact page and information about the DTO model.By exploring and comparing best practice examples ofurban transport delivery in cities across Europe, the initiativehas enabled a greater understanding of how to make urbantransport strategies work more effectively. The final reportsfrom year three of the Urban Transport BenchmarkingInitiative are available at:www.transportbenchmarks.org/publications/reports.html3. International Benefits, Evaluation and Costs (IBEC) Working Group is an international forum for information exchangeon the topic of costs, benefits and cost-effectiveness of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).page 26