TRA 2014 conference

TRA2014 : from Paris with Transport

Between 14 and 17 April 2014, IFSTTAR’s teams working with that from the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development, Transport and Energy (MEDDE) and with the support of the Ministry of National Education, Research and Higher education (MENESR) organised the 2014 Transport Research Arena conference. Many partners from France and abroad gave us their assistance and helped us meet this challenge which we took up four years ago…

TRA… What? Who? Why?

Originally focused on the road, this conference has gradually evolved and TRA 2014 will adopt a thoroughly multimodal perspective. In order to prepare and organise the conference, the teams from IFSTTAR, MEDDE and MENESR have been joined by the 5 member organisations:

• The Conference of European Directors of Roads (CEDR)
• The European Commission (EC)
• The ERTRAC technology platform for road transport research
• The ERRAC technology platform for railway research
• The Waterborne TP technology platform for research into inland waterborne and maritime transport.

More informations on www.traconference.eu

For this edition, IFSTTAR wished to emphasize the TRA conference’s multimodal approach, while at the same time attracting a new public by linking it with other transport-related events, consolidating the scientific quality of the conference that is at the crossroads between research and implementation and facilitating cross-fertilization between different transport modes and research fields.

The 2014 edition allowed us to have links with:

three related conferences :

• Women's Issues in Transportation, 5th International Conference, organised par Ifsttar/DEST together with TRB in the United States
• AUN2014 : Airports in Urban Networks organised by the STAC (MEDDE/DGAC)
• 13th French language seminar on socioeconomic aspects of transportation, organised by MEDDE/CGDD/DRI

and 10 events :

• Seminar on road safety “Road Safety – Distracted Driving Functions”, organised by the ITF/OECD
• ITTECOP 2014 Seminar, organised by the MEDDE
• Annual ERA NET Transport Conference ENT, organised by the MEDDE
• OPTIMA seminar, organised par l’IDRRIM, ATEC/ITS France and the French national committee of PIARC
• PREDIM Workshop  “ITS pour une mobilité sûre et durable” (ITS for safe and sustainable travel)
• PIANC Roundtable
• The seminar “Road safety between scientific research and social representations” (La sécurité routière entre recherche scientifique et représentations sociales) organised by the Fondation pour la Sécurité Routière
• Seminar on Logistics and freight, organised by the European Technology Platform ALICE
• METROFREIGHT annual workshop

In addition to its own aspirations, TRA2014 shares those set out in “Horizon 2020”, the European Commission’s research and innovation programme. This explains why TRA2014 was the first major conference where the transport-related aspects of this programme were set out and discussed in depth.

The nearby exhibition provided more than 80 partners with an area of over 2000m² in which to present their innovations. More broadly, TRA2014 has confirmed that this European conference provides an opportunity for researchers, practitioners, academics, manufacturers, operators and transport and infrastructure users to meet each other. Topics discussed include what is the best way of using research findings, the best of managing ongoing and future projects. Those present are able to compare their experiences so as to ensure that transport research improves European competitiveness. This biannual meeting is not to be missed!