Towards the next transport generation

ASECAP is the European Association of Operators of Toll Road Infrastructures. Its mission is to promote charging as the most efficient tool to finance the construction, operation and maintenance of motorways and other major road infrastructures.

Under this understanding, ASECAP members build, operate and manage motorway networks in Europe and produce a road service of a certain quality. They provide this service to the European citizens at a given price.

There is no ‘free’ road in the world and roads do not fall from the sky like manna. For a road to be constructed and used somebody always pays either directly as a road user or receiver of a service, or indirectly as a citizen through the not always transparent and complex tax corridors.

For ASECAP and its members, the situation is simple and clear; “It is not the road that counts but its proper use. Road transport is a service that an entity – either private or public – provides under the regulatory framework of the state. This service has a quality and a cost. Defining the term ‘quality’ as a matrix of mobility, safety, security, appropriate speeding, good information system, etc, and fixing the right price in a socially oriented market is not a very simple issue.”

I recently read an interesting interview about transport where a serious industry personality was explaining that the six months leading to the coming French presidency in the EU will have a huge impact on transport and being convinced that the EU would finally move closer to a sustainable transport environment. I automatically multiplied a ‘six months’ presidential vision 27 times and as a result I got the EU benchmark of diverging transport visions of 27 EU states extending from Ireland and Malta for the 13 and a half years to come.

I remember a phrase of a high class European politician who was invited onto one of the political panels of ASECAP. In a simplistic way he admitted the obvious. This is what he said: “I am a politically elected leader and I will have four years to materialize my vision in the transport sector, basically on planning and building transport infrastructure networks. Infrastructure networks are long-term investment decisions, so logically my four years term will have expired before even starting. A new personality may take my post and decide differently on a new vision. Who do our citizens blame for the lack of coherence, him or me? It is simple. I am the guilty party because from the very beginning I ignored that serious transport decisions go beyond a short-term horizon and demand long-term cooperation from the leaders, otherwise the result is chaotic and the so-called leaders are just demagogues or dreamers”.

I firmly support that the direction of institutional transport change in the EU results from a constant peaceful ‘struggle’ between two forces – the state (collectivist) and the market (individualistic). The citizens want better transport, increased mobility, higher safety standards, accompanied by lower taxes, while in parallel in their widely accepted democracy they view with suspicion market capitalism, which is however the indispensable basis of our democracy.

My personal motto is simple: “Short-term solutions are not providing long-term growth and sometimes work against it. A strong economy is never built on weak transport fundamentals.”

It is always interesting to manage our bearings in a complex and ever changing world. So, let us ask what the world will look like in a decade or two. Of course, forecasting the future accurately is impossible and surprises always appear. However, by projecting known trends and tendencies it is possible to describe a remarkable amount about the broad outlines of the world one or two decades from now. In particular we can identify, with high confidence among a number of factors, one factor which is the increasing mobility, driven by the technological changes in transportation and communication. This factor accumulates relentlessly over time, so that by 2030 – as an indicative date – we will have ‘profoundly’ transformed the world the way we know it.

What is meant by ‘profoundly’ and how can we manage this transformation by directing the “forces of change” to the agreed targets?

As a part of EU future scenario, we must determine processes of growth and define choices of regional development in order to orient the economic flows and human settlings and resources. We should always bear in mind that the transport networks may create negative externalities, but mainly they generate positive externalities that generate growth, make attractive the local systems and finally modernise one region which for geographic, urban and economic characteristics might present structural problems.

When talking about globalisation we should understand that we talk about modern European market capitalism, a market of ‘economics of flows’ where the transport systems are an integral part.

History proves that in the city port, the moving caravans, the cities next to rivers, or in rail junctions and lately in the routes, the accessibility was always the most important parameter.

We have consultants and politicians agreeing on the obvious, i.e. that infrastructure networks should be efficient and modern; they surprise no one by arguing that it is a benefit in all the regions to develop in a strategic position next to commercial routes.

We read “Mobility and, therefore, the transport policy, affect directly and indirectly the employment having a significant impact in the EU GDP growth”, or “Transport growth and socio-economic growth are correlated.” So what? Analysis is never an end in itself, it is just a tool. Isolated transport targets and objectives to be pursued have been properly analysed. However, in the forecasted socio-economic environment, the targeted European reality demands for fundamental immediate and long-term changes on the basic economic principles and political strategies are to be followed. Political and economic visions should be quantified and always accompanied by a tool of actions guiding the EU machinery, deciding not only ‘where to go’ but ‘what to do in order to go where I want to go’. There are difficulties of assessment due to the multiplicity of factors affecting transport.

A new term needs to be defined and thoroughly examined in the EU terminology which complements the term ‘mobility’. I speak about ‘accessibility’. Structuring the matrix of accessibility and managing its endogenous parameters will be the main goal in the years to follow. When taking action towards politically correct, but still undefined terms like sustainable transport, greener transport, ITS etc, the priority should remain in the simple understanding that: transport is not something to promise to the voters. Transport is an equity that a part of the world (private and/or public) produces and another part consumes (the citizen – mobile consumer).

The modalities and quantified actions going beyond static and ambiguous qualitative messages are the ones that will allow all the stakeholders (public and private) to cooperate and establish an adequate type of relationship between transport, mobility/accessibility requirements, environment and society. The private sector already indicated that an efficient transport network could only be built in a sphere where an adequate regulatory framework is harmoniously balanced with the free market forces. The EU institutions, the states and the private sector involved, should co-decide what the targeted transport service is. We repeat on various occasions that Brussels is “consensus building” without really defining it. ‘Consensus building’ is a simple book with two chapters. One is a fully democratic analysis, a free flow of ideas and opinions from everywhere. But this part ends somewhere and does not last forever. The second chapter closes with a synthesis with connecting points, describing actions, drawing lines, taking risks, in one word: ‘deciding’.

In the years that followed the 80s, a dramatic increase in the liberalisation of transport policies and the strengthening of the role of the private sector therein was seen. The increased private sector interest reflects in fact changing ideologies about the role of the state and certain dissatisfaction about the purely publicly provided services. This drastic change reflects the basic need to restructure both the public and the private sectors in an attempt to improve their efficiencies and really sustain the transport improvements. A restructure of the new transport policy orientations and mechanisms is needed to review the role of the governments at the core of the policy action plan while defining from the beginning the role of the private sector therein. This new framework should be precise about the rules under which the public sector will review its future role, being both a partner and a regulator (political, social and economic) of the different publicly and/or privately operated transport services and infrastructures. The governments’ transition into their new role will require significant adjustments to overcome the public sector’s structural inefficiencies and weaknesses, mainly concerning their lost ability to ensure fairness in their regulatory decisions and independence from political interference, being themselves sometimes regulators and regulated. It is important also to ensure that the regulatory process is designed to allow citizens to voice their concerns through efficient channels, rather than leaving them to informal structures or informal ‘democratic’ internet questionnaires.

In the following years the guiding principle of the legislative framework will be the opening up of a greener and caring transport market. ‘Transport’ will be addressed as a product, ‘mobility’ will be realistically measured, ‘social costs and benefits’ will be calculated, ‘greener transport’ will be defined and ‘getting the right prices’ will be essential.

So far I intentionally kept out of my thoughts the intelligent transport and the ITS acronym. GALILEO and standardized technology may be properly used in the future as instruments needed to support the road managers in their job, to safely and efficiently manage their roads and for the states to regulate the transport system. It can help a company transform data from its transport operations, from its business partners and from its markets into useful competitive and interoperable information. ITS can be the source of profitable innovations in the way a company interacts with its customers and its suppliers. I agree with a relevant article in the Wall Street Journal that there is still a tendency to think of ITS as a basic utility like plumbing or telephone service. The reason for all this is a wall that sometimes separates the ITS department from the rest of the business. There are reasons for the wall’s existence – mind-set differences between management staff and ITS staff, language differences and mainly the inherent difficulty of managing a rapidly changing technology. If we are to succeed we must give ITS a certain but well-defined role in the ‘strategic transport departments’. To do this, prudent steps are needed.

So far we do not exactly know what ITS is – not even its full potential in the deployment side. Let us then try to agree on what ITS cannot do and examine its present inability to achieve advanced concrete transport targets. ITS will never manage traffic flows. ITS is not a traffic flow management instrument but a traffic monitoring tool. In the future, ITS may develop to be the key tool for ‘real time traffic flow monitoring and measuring’ if the markets seriously define the targets and invest accordingly.

Traffic flow management is the job for infrastructure managers – either they are private managers or they are public ‘managers’ and for this job they will use the tool that is called ITS.

Most of the transport parameters are now properly analysed. We know all the pieces of the puzzle, but we are unable to construct the puzzle. The difficulties lay on the lack of a long-term decision making mechanism. Can the leading politicians and the big CEOs fix it or will they continue being lost in translation? If no action is taken, transport will remain a big incognita creating permanent contradictions between the society (demanding ever more mobility), the economy (working for more and more growth), the public opinion (becoming increasingly intolerant of chronic delays) and the environment (falling in a degradation spin). Beyond the big political targets and phrases things are much simpler and the citizen, voter and road customer just wants a good transport service and value for his money.