CEDR tasked its project group ‘Capacity and Service to Road Users’ to come up with a definition of the term ‘network operations’ (NetOp) and, based on this definition, to develop new ideas that could be incorporated into the way the National Road Authorities (NRAs) work.
For the purposes of the following definition of the term ‘NetOp’, the provision of services to the customer/road user is considered to be the core task of NRAs.
Network Operations is the delivering of user-oriented traffic management services to fulfil the need for the sustainable1 movement of people and goods. 1 For the purposes of this definition, ‘sustainable’ is understood to mean ‘safe, economical, and environmentally friendly’.
In order to make it easier for NRAs to use the term and to act on it, it was decided to limit the scope of the NetOp definition by putting it into context. Among other things, NetOp mainly:
- Harmonises/balances the demand for mobility and the supply of services to facilitate this demand. It includes all conditions that allow for the provision of NetOp services, such as a consistent network strategy, an efficient organisational structure, processes, programmes, capabilities, and an analysis of costs and benefits.
- Supports the efficient use of transport means and the existing infrastructure.
- Focuses not only on the improvement of traffic flows but also supports the protection of the environment and the improvement of road safety.
- Can be provided on a collective (public) or individual (private) basis by service providers with different objectives (e.g. by NRAs seeking to improve traffic flow performance or by broadcasters seeking to attract listeners).
- Combines traffic management, traffic information management, and asset management.
From the users’ point of view, a distinction can be made between services provided directly to the (individual) users and those provided indirectly to the users within collective objective(s). A separate theme has been created for emergency services because these services have both a collective and an individual objective, resulting in a threefold subdivision:
• user-oriented services (travellers and goods),
• network management services, and
• emergency management services.
This subdivision supports interaction with other stakeholders. The involvement of more stakeholders⎯both public and private⎯in NetOp will change the current tasks, roles, and responsibilities of NRAs. These changes are already taking place and it is expected that NRAs will be positioned and acknowledged as one of the key mobility service providers.
In order to allow NRAs to organise services and make them available to road users, this report contains an inventory of essential aspects that influence either directly or indirectly the performance of NetOp or are a prerequisite to NetOp. These aspects can be summed up under the following headings: services, consistent network strategies, efficient organisation, processes, capabilities, programmes, and cost-benefit analysis.
The discussion about the aforementioned definition and its context was based on experience gained in practical cases at national level. As an important spin-off, this report presents some new ideas and makes recommendations for action that is urgently needed in order to allow NRAs to become better network operators.
It will be necessary to further elaborate on the following two actions:
• business models for the organisation of NetOp
• cooperation between public service providers and/or operators.
It is expected that the results of these activities will make a major contribution to the future position of NRAs in the multi-actor public/private arena within the space of one year.
In order to demonstrate the importance of taking action on NetOp, the ‘do nothing’ approach and the ‘NetOp’ approach were compared. Based on this comparison, the practical national cases discussed with NRA experts, and the results of the Executive Board workshop in Rome, the Governing Board adopted this report on NetOp presented by the project group ‘Capacity and Service to Road Users’. |
