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A FEHRL team has picked up the prize for Road Design and Road Construction with their paper at last week's PIARC World Road Congress

Last week (Monday 26th September), Martin Lamb (Transport Research Laboratory - TRL, UK), the main author of a paper that looks to the future of road design, was awarded the top essay prize for Road Design and Road Construction at the Opening Ceremony of the PIARC XXIV World Road Congress in Mexico. The paper, entitled "The Forever Open Road - Defining the Next Generation Road", was authored by FEHRL institute members Martin Lamb, Bob Collis (Transport Research Laboratory - TRL, UK), Stefan Deix (Austrian Institute of Technology - AIT, Austria), Beata Kreiger (Bundesanstalt für Straβenwesen - BASt, Germany) and Nicolas Hautiere (Institut français des sciences et technologies des transports, de l'aménagement et des réseaux - IFSTTAR, France) and was presented at a special winners session on Tuesday 27th September. 

This winning paper describes the Forever Open Road concept, the programme of research and calls for future research funding to deliver a comprehensive strategy that creates the next generation road that can be adopted across Europe, rather than continue with the current "hit and miss" approach to research. Forever Open Road forms FEHRL’s flagship research programme. Technology trials that support the concept are already underway and planned research will lead to large-scale demonstration projects showing how the next generation road will work. Copies of the paper were distributed to all delegates with the conference proceedings.

The World Road Association-PIARC was established in 1909. It brings together the road administrations of 118 governments and has members- individuals, companies, authorities and organisations in over 140 countries.

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