Activities - European and International interfacing

On the European scene, ECTRI and its members maintain permanent links with European Union representatives (European Commission) for policy formulation advice and with other European organisations like OECD/ITF or EIB.
ECTRI is represented and active in a number of European platforms like:

• European Technology Platforms (ETPs in short) i.e. ERTRAC (European Road Transport Research Advisory Council) – Plenary, Steering and Working groups –, ERRAC (European Rail Research Advisory Council) – WG on Urban Mobility – and Waterborne – Plenary and Mirror Group –

• iMobility Forum (former eSafety Forum) at the plenary meeting, the Steering roup and the Working Groups level

• Urban ITS expert group - expert groups set by the European Commission

ECTRI is cooperating with associations like EARPA, ERTICO, FEHRL, FERSI, POLIS and the Networks of Excellence and Virtual Centres of Excellence EURNEX, HUMANIST, ISN and NEARCTIS. ECTRI is in close cooperation with some of these organisations in the frame of the 'Lyon Declaration'. This cooperation resulted in an EC funded project ‘Developing the European Transport Research Alliance – DETRA’, running till October 2012, in which ECTRI is partner.  

In 2010, ECTRI signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Association for European Transport – AET to foster cooperation between the two associations notably in the frame of the European Transport Conference - ETC organized by AET.

ECTRI also closely follows up European developments such as the Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe – JPI Urban Europe.

At the international level, ECTRI maintains links with transport research bodies such as the US Transportation Research Board - TRB and similar bodies in Japan, India, China and Australia.

In February 2014, ECTRI gave its inputs to the International Transport Forum 2014 Annual Summit 'Transport for a changing world', (178 Ko).

From October 2011 to October 2013, ECTRI coordinated a 2-year EC funded project ‘European Transport Research Area International cooperation activities – EUTRAIN’. This project aimed to put forward a framework for international cooperation in Transport research between the European Transport Research Area (ERA-T) and other regions of the world, in order to overcome existing barriers for such collaboration, give an increased focus on the human resources as well as the infrastructures and create a more global understanding between research administrations of the benefits, success factors, and preconditions for such cooperation.

In July 2013, ECTRI organised an US Scanning tour, liaising with the MIT Freight Lab (Boston), The Volpe NTSC (Cambridge), The TRB (Washington D.C.), The OTREC (Portland), The MTC (Oakland) and the University of California (Davis). The ECTRI Members participating to this tour were: A. Millonig (AIT), K. Pospisil and M. Pipa (CDV), B. Lenz (DLR), U. Clausen (FhG), K. Werner-Johansson (TOI) and H. Kanner (VTT). A summary is here presented.

More particularly, in 2006, ECTRI and TRB, both representing a substantial part of the transport research community in their respective regions, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with objective to foster and facilitate greater synergies for information-sharing and cooperation between the two organisations. This MoU is implemented by 2-year action plan organising a number of joint activities. In this frame a report has been issued in February 2009 on "EU/US Transport Research Collaboration: Challenges and opportunities". In 2011, a new action plan was agreed for the period covering 2011-2013. Since the signature of this MoU, ECTRI has been very active through chairing and participating in TRB Annual Meetings’ sessions. More information.