Our conference has reached the final stage and it’s time to draw some conclusions of those 3 days of interesting, perceptive, inspiring and hard work. In addition to the technical sessions you had possibility to participate in technical tours seeing our roads and discovering the beauty of our islands – Saaremaa and Hiiumaa.
During 2 days of the conference we covered 6 technical themes totally with 92 presentations in 15 sessions:
- Strategic management;
- Road management;
- Co-operation management;
- Bridge management;
- Tool management;
- Traffic management.
As you probably noticed, in all themes is present the word “management”. It’s probably indicating the present status of the transportation sector of the Baltic States – joined the European Union in 2004 Baltic States have a possibility to use European structural and development funds for the development of their infrastructure. As result of that they have passed the stage of chronicle deficit of funds and moved to the stage of effective management of available funds resulting with the effective road, bridge and traffic management based on the strategic management.
Next I would like briefly to cover the main topics of the technical themes and on the name of the Scientific Committee of the Conference to draw some conclusions:
- Strategic management
We had 32 presentations focusing on:
- Road network development programs;
- Financing of road construction and maintenance;
- Public-private partnership (PPP);
- Performance-based maintenance contracts;
- Nondestructive testing of road structures and quality assurance.
- Road management
29 presentations focusing mostly on different technical aspects of road construction and maintenance:
- ·Heavy duty road pavements;
- ·Maintenance of asphalt pavements;
- ·Gravel road maintenance and dust control;
- ·Soil stabilization with enzymes and oil-shale ash;
- ·Winter maintenance and environmental assessment of deicing chemicals;
- ·Descriptions of specific design examples.
- Co-operation management
7 presentations covering technology transfer matters and co-operation between different partners in abroad and at home also postgraduate training of road engineers.
- Bridge management
6 presentations covering bridge management systems in Baltic States and different aspects of bridge structures.
- Tool management
5 presentations were dealing with soil compaction, use of steel furnace slag and unbound crushed concrete for road construction.
- Traffic management
13 presentations about:
- Analysis of traffic safety in Baltic Sea region;
- Traffic signing and roadside advertising;
- Accident costs and etc.
Based on the presentations the Scientific Committee of the Conference can conclude that:
- Road network development planning has to be based on the social and regional development forecasts.
- Design, construction, reconstruction and maintenance have to be contracted out on the performance-based contracts. More widely to use the principle design-construct-maintain (one contractor will do all).
- More widely has to be used the involvement of private finances into the infrastructure development based on the public-private partnership.
- In the increasing traffic load conditions more attention has to be paid to the development of heavy duty road pavements. Pavement design procedures of Baltic States have to be revised and if possible unified taking into account local conditions.
- As there is a lack of soils suitable for road construction, more attention has to be paid for different techniques of soil stabilization for improving their structural properties. Also use of different geosynthetics in different stages of road construction and repair has to become common for saving funds and materials.
- Possibilities to use different waste materials (as crushed concrete etc.) in road construction have to be investigated taking into account the experience of other countries (Netherland, Japan, UK).
- Technology transfer between the Baltic Sates (incorporating also other possible partners) has to be improved.
- Bridge management systems in all Baltic States have to be implemented and used for determination of bridges or their elements requiring urgent repair or replacement and based on that for ensuring proper financing.
- For reducing the accident rate of the Baltic States the specific traffic safety action plan has to be implemented.
And finally I would like to refer the conclusions of the 1st Baltic Road Officials Meeting in Riga, on September 26-28, 1932 which are currently also as actual as 74 years ago:
- Roads have major importance in cultural and economical development of nation and the road network development has to take place according to those needs.
- There must exist similar standards and requirements for international roads crossing different countries.
