In 1996 the European Parliament and the European Council approved Guidelines for the development of a Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) (EU-Commission, 1996). Managing and planning of TERN requires Performance Indicators as bases to enable its monitoring and regular reporting on the implementation of EU-Commissions' decisions and the needs of revision. Furtheron there is a wish to undertake benchmarking for which indicators are also necessary. Benchmarking in the sense of international comparison has for the WERD (Club of West European Road Directors) the function of learning from experiences of other countries. As a generally accepted definition of Performance Indicators does not exist SG TERN (Subgroup TERN set up by WERD) has suggested that Performance Indicators related to roads are quantifiable attributes used at national and trans-European levels to describe the performance of policy actions/decisions, management of road networks and road traffic, funding and general impacts of the road transport system. By limiting the present work to the national road transport systems and in particular the TERN there may be the views of stakeholders to be considered. They may have different, sometimes overlapping and conflicting objectives. These stakeholders are: the Council (of transport ministers), the European Parliament, the Commission, and national governments/ministries; the national road administrations; the road users and the freight using industry/business ; the neighbours to the roads. It is distinguished between the following 2 levels of indicators: general, descriptive road transport related indicators, most often related to the entire society (country) or to the entire public road network ; indicators related to single sections of national road networks and TERN and linked to more specific objectives of EU-policies, management by national road administrations, services to road users and industry/business. Indicators related to EU-policies are derived from policy objectives expressed in the Guide-lines for TEN-T and the White Paper on Transport policy 2010. Indicators for management and services are developed from appropriate objectives already used in some EU-Member States. Developing, implementing and making use of performance indicators should be under-stood as a permanent process. New policies, demands, management methods, monitoring equipment etc. will at all times require careful considerations as to include future performance indicators and their related data and measurements. For that reason it should be followed the experience as described, developments as they occur from studies of e.g. PIARC and the use of performance indicators in other parts of the industrial world. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135448.
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