Hermann Meyer, CEO ERTICO – ITS Europe, presented the ERTICO Partnership activities including CO-GISTICS, in a panel discussion on freight transport at the European Transport Forum in Brussels, 23 September 2014.
Magda Kopczynska, Director, Directorate C – Innovative and Sustainable Mobility, DG MOVE; Ana Palacio, European Coordinator for the TEN-T Rhine-Alpine Corridor; Olof Persson, President & CEO, Volvo Group; Marie-Christine Lombard, CEO, GEODIS; Michel Savy, Professor, Université de Paris Est Créteil; and Hermann Meyer discussed how to build an interconnected European transport system and achieve a sustainable single European transport area.
There was consensus that the deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems and cooperative systems introduces advanced traffic management capacities to freight transport and paves the way to building a connected inter-modal transport system for Europe. The panel debated how to ensure pan-European harmonisation and how to speed up the process in order to improve logistics efficiency. They discussed who are the needed stakeholders and how the latter should cooperate to make it happen, and what it requests from authorities.
Hermann Meyer stated as highest priority the need for public and private stakeholders to achieve quick and effective deployment of already mature ITS applications and services so that ITS becomes even more business relevant. There is a need to integrate smart trucks, smart infrastructure, smart traffic management and smart logistics operations in the context of data collection, exchange and processing.
