Effective and Coordinated Road Infrastructures Safety Operations

Abstract

The general objective of the ECOROADS project is to overcome the barrier established by the formal interpretation of the two Directives 2008/96/EC (on road infrastructure safety management) and 2004/54/EC (on tunnels), that in practice do not allow the same Road Safety Audits/Inspections to be performed inside tunnels.The main problem is that, while from the user (driver) point of view a road is a unique linear infrastructure generally in open terrain and sometimes in closed environment (tunnels), the strict application of the two Directives leads to a non-uniform approach to the infrastructure safety management outside and inside tunnels.To overcome this barrier, ECOROADS projects aims at the establishment of a common enhanced approach to road infrastructure and tunnel safety management by using the concepts and criteria of the Directive, 2008/96/CE on road infrastructure safety management and the results of related European Commission (EC) funded projects.Such an objective will be achieved through the following specific activities:Workshops with the stakeholders (European tunnel and road managers); Analysis/review of national practices regarding Road Safety Inspections (RSI) and Road Safety Audits (RSA), starting from the results of the two studies recently launched by the EC's Directorate for Mobility and Transport to assess the impact of the two Directives 2008/96/EC and 2004/54/EC--Exchange of best practices and experiences between European tunnel experts and road safety professionals;--Pilot joint safety operations in five European road sections which feature both open roads and tunnels;--Recommendations and guidelines for the application of the RSA and RSI concepts within the tunnel safety operations;Thanks to the high transferability of the ECOROADS results, the present formal gap between the Directive, 2008/96/EC and the Directive 2004/54/EC will be bridged, thus leading to “faster, more sustainable and better planned interventions with maximum safety for the workers and other traffic participants”.