On Thursday 9 June 2005, the World Road Association (WRA) held its UK Congress entitled Roads ~ In Step with the World, in Birmingham. The Congress, organised by the UK National Committee of WRA, was hosted by the Committee Chairman, Steve Lee of Surrey County Council and UK First Delegate to the WRA, Ginny Clark - Chief Engineer of the Highways Agency.

The Congress brought together UK and international speakers to examine their vision for the future and the way forward for the road industry in the key areas of road safety and managing demand.  Colin Clinton, Arup Director and President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, gave the after dinner speech at the Pre-Congress Dinner, putting the issues into the context of his beloved West Midlands. The Congress was opened by the Minister of State for Transport, Stephen Ladyman, who celebrated the contribution the WRA has made to spreading Transportation knowledge and best practice around the world and also took the opportunity to extoll the virtues of the recently opened Bingley Relief Road, winner of the 2004 British Construction Industry Award for Civil Engineering and the Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Award.

The first technical paper was presented by Callum Findlay, from Surrey County Council, describing his vision for the future of traffic management and travel information. He challenged the hypothesis that increasing prosperity will inevitably lead to increasing road traffic and congestion and proposed measures to assist road users to optimise journeys.

Following the morning coffee break, Chris Luebkeman, Director of Global Foresight and Innovation at Arup, gave a challenging and stimulating paper on ‘Change and the Future’ looking at the influencing factors on travel and the responses that society and transport professionals will need to adopt to respond to these challenges.

Neil Paulley from TRL continued the debate with his paper, ‘The Effects of Future Technology’, which described systems that are currently in development to meet the needs of travellers in the future. After a lively discussion, lunch was taken with a chance to visit the exhibition and exchange ideas generated by the morning session.

In the afternoon two sessions ran in parallel.  Rob Gifford, Executive Director of PACTS, chaired a session on safety with papers from Professor Oliver Carsten of the University of Leeds and Dr Margie Peden from the World Health Organisation debating road traffic injury prevention. Ginny Clark chaired the other session on managing capacity with papers from Professor George Hazel, past President of the IHT and Managing Director of McLean Hazel Ltd and Dr Katie Turnbull of the Texas Transportation Institute. The two presentations compared attitudes and approaches in the UK and the USA to the issue of dealing with traffic congestion.

Not surprisingly many key issues were raised and few conclusions were drawn but David Hutchinson, the incoming President of IHT, closed what was an excellent day by presenting an amusing but incisive summary of the sessions and the issues.

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