The International Transport Forum has opened a new chapter in its long-standing co-operation with the corporate world. Twelve multi-national companies from seven countries met in Paris on 20 January to inaugurate the Forum’s new Corporate Partnership Board (CPB) and set a roadmap for private-sector knowledge sharing with policy makers.
The CPB will serve as the International Transport Forum’s mechanism for including expert knowledge from corporations in transport and related areas for policy analysis. CPB activities will comprise the launch of policy analysis projects, events and publications on the basis of an annual work plan that will be agreed by members.
The CPB’s founding members are Volvo (Sweden – automotive), China Communications Construction Company Group (CCCC, China – infrastructure), COLAS (France – infrastructure), China Ocean Shipping Group Company (COSCO, China – shipping), Ekol Logistics (Turkey – logistics), Kapsch TrafficCom (Austria – Intelligent Transport Systems), Meridiam Infrastructure (France – financial sector), Michelin (France – automotive), Nissan (Japan – automotive), PTV Group (Germany – Intelligent Transport Systems), SerTrans (Turkey – logistics), Total (France – energy).
The inaugural CPB meeting agreed on operating guidelines and created a standing committee to govern the board’s tactical business under the chairmanship of the ITF Secretary-General. Corporate Partners will make proposals for the first round of projects by early February 2014, which will then be consolidated by the standing committee. Work on CPB projects is slated to start in March; presentation of first results is planned for October 2014.
The CPB is expected to grow from the initial twelve members to a maximum of 50 members over three years. It supersedes the ITF Advisory Board. The next plenary meeting of the CPB will be held during the Annual Summit of Transport Ministers in Leipzig, Germany on 21-23 May 2014.
“I am delighted that a dozen multi-national companies have agreed to become founding members of ITF’s Corporate Partnership Board”, said José Viegas, Secretary-General of the ITF. “I laud their entrepreneurial spirit and look forward to working with them. The corporate world is at the frontier of new developments in the transport sector, and the Corporate Partnership Board will help the ITF to integrate the cutting-edge perspective of business into our analysis even better and provide relevant evidence-based advice to policy makers.”
Patrick Oliva, Senior Vice-President at Michelin said: “The CPB represents a very promising step forward in securing a confident dialogue between the public and private sector in the field of transport innovation. Tomorrow’s transport requires not only audacious technologies but also forward looking policies, worldwide”.
“I am very pleased to announce our cooperation with the CPB. This is certainly an exciting and strategically important task for us because the implementation of sustainable mobility solutions is based on a close partnership between the worlds of business and politics. We are looking forward to sharing our extensive expertise in the field of advanced intelligent transport technologies and contributing to the development of sustainable and innovative transport solutions,” said Vincent Kobesen, CEO of PTV Group.
