Role and Positioning of the Road Administration

A Working Group of PIARC Committee C15 analyzed various aspects of the organization, roles and responsibilities of Road Administrations worldwide, in relation to external factors, such as economic development, social demands, environmental and safety concerns, technological development and political concerns. The analysis relies on 36 answers to a questionnaire. The document presents the conclusions drawn on external factors, the link between economic development and the road network, the role and [...]

Highway Performance Monitoring Systems (HPMS)

In 1996, PIARC launched a project linked to Highway Performance Monitoring Systems (HPMS). The objective of this project was to assess existing HPMS-systems to provide road administrations (especially from Central and eastern Europe) with efficient short-term and long-term maintenance strategies and appropriate means to report to the Ministry of Finance and Parliament. At first stage, this project defined performance criteria for evaluation and acquire necessary information of the existing systems; [...]

Socio-Economic Demands and Modifications of Bridges

Bridges provide vital links in the road network. Bridges are one of the network elements that require the most attention because the investment in bridges represents approximately thirty percent of the total investment. Road users, road owners and other interested parties - in the following referred to as society - are currently setting up new socio-economic (S-E) demands on the road network including bridges e.g. demands for increasing passability or a reduction of the impact on the environment. [...]

Social Acceptance of Road Infrastructure Projects

This report, which has been drawn up on the basis of an initial questionnaire distributed to the PIARC C4, aims primarily to provide answers, illustrated by a number of annexed examples, to the following questions: 1) What are the different levels of acceptance or recognition of projects that can be considered as universal values able to explain the social acceptance concept? 2) Based on examples of project development processes provided by the countries, what are the key stages in which it [...]

Towards a Multimodal Approach of the Transport System

Sustainable development is already used world-wide to represent the need to direct the future of the earth and human beings. The transportation sector plays a major role both for the economic development and the environmental balance of the world. A comprehensive multimodal approach to the transport system is a major step toward the sustainable mobility in addition to the contribution available from various technological advances in cleaner and energy-saving vehicles. Later in this report [...]