FREIGHTVISION - Freight Transport FORESIGHT 2050
Overview
Background & policy context:
In the coming years and decades the European Union faces the following challenges in the freight sector:
- the need to ensure and increase economic growth; and
- the need to deal with an increase of freight transport demand;
while at the same time:
- reducing environmental emissions (mainly CO2);
- reducing dependency on fossil energy;
- reducing accidents; and
- avoiding congestion and other negative impacts on the environment and population.
Many different stakeholder groups have created their proposals to achieve sustainable freight transport. Most of them address only part of the problem or focus on only one aspect of a solution. Following these advices leads to sub optimisation and less efficient solutions. A holistic approach is needed integrating all aspects of the problem (infrastructure, vehicles, fuels, interoperability etc) and all types of criteria in the solution (research, technologies, policies and pricing).
Objectives:
The FREIGHTVISION project aimed to develop a long-term vision and a robust and adaptive action plan both for transport and technology policy for sustainable long-distance freight transport, which are supported as much as possible by the relevant stakeholders.
In order to develop a vision and an action plan the following tasks were performed:
- analysing transport policy, technology development, and mega trends with regard to long-distance freight transport;
- integrating them into forecasts;
- developing scenarios how to reach a desirable future; and
- defining for this the vision and action plan.
Methodology:
A 'Foresight' process was implemented to achieve stakeholders' support for the vision and action plan. For this purpose four FREIGHTVISION Forums allowed the active involvement of representatives from the Advisory Councils, ERANET (Transport and Road), ministries, infrastructure operators, industries and other stakeholders. The aim of the forums was to reach a common understanding about shaping the future and getting a maximum legitimacy for both the scenarios, the vision and action plan developed.
Share this page