Asecap

Tolled motorways for a safe journey!

ASECAP and its members lead the fight for increased road safety.

In its annual road safety conference, organized in Prague(1), ASECAP, the European Association of Operators of Tolled Road Infrastructures presented to the EU institutions, national authorities and transport stakeholders the outstanding results achieved in the 2000-2010 decade. Many of its members, tolled motorways concessionaires, have fully met the 50% road fatalities reduction target set by the European Commission and some even beyond, despite the increase of their network and the overall number of km. travelled! The conference was also the occasion for the main actors to discuss the upcoming 4th European Road safety action programme.
Significant achievements in road safety are the result of the best engineering practices in terms of research, design, maintenance, operation and were made possible on tolled road network and under PPP schemes, where the collected revenues are directly earmarked in order to make road infrastructures safer, greener and smarter.
Enrico Grillo-Pasquarelli, Director for Inland transport of the new DG MOVE (formerly DG TREN) warmly praised the role played by the concessionaires’ sector and by ASECAP, a professional and reliable partner of the European Commission. He then presented the main drivers behind the 4th Road Safety Action Programme that will be launched in May. The focus of the future EU strategy will be set on the weakest elements of the safety chain: users behavior (education and training), vulnerable users, secondary networks, enforcement of existing rules, and on the improvement of the situation in less performing Member States. M. Kaas, Deputy Minister for Transport of the Czech Republic, highlighted the importance of the future EU  strategy and informed the participants on the Czech ambitious safety program that gives a particular  attention to prevention, both in terms of supervision of the design and engineering phases, and on education to the users and information campaigns. Reiterating ASECAP’s strong support to the European Commission’s action, K. Dionelis, ASECAP Secretary General, underlined the need to develop reliable  statistics, common definitions and sound data collection mechanisms. He therefore called the EU executive to address the right objectives and set a particular focus on inappropriate users’ behaviour, secondary roads and on the urban dimension, where most of the accidents occur. In this perspective, ASECAP is ready to share its expertise and put the experience of its members at the service of the European institutions and citizens, thus contributing to saving even more lives in the decade to come.

NOTES TO EDITOR:
1 ASECAP’s annual road safety conference “Coordination & Cooperation: the pace in European road safety” was jointly organised with Kapsch Telematic Service in Prague (Czech Republic) and gathered up to 70 participants. Stakeholders were invited to discuss the forthcoming EU Road safety action program, as well as to appreciate the best and most innovative practices in terms of motorways management.

ASECAP is the European Association of tolled road infrastructures operators. It gathers 20 national members managing more than 40.000 km. of road networks. ASECAP mission is to promote tolling and the direct user-payer principle as the most efficient tool to finance the construction, safe operation and effective maintenance of motorways and other major road infrastructures.