ARTS (Advanced Road Telematics in the South-west) and SERTI (South European Road Transport Implementions) are two Euro-regional projects funded by the European Commission (DG-TREN) via TEN-T budget line. ARTS started in November 1997. It is the first approach from Public Traffic Administrations in Spain, France and Portugal to study how the co-ordination of traffic telematic implementations projects at regional, bilateral and multilateral levels, can improve the continuity and quality of the services to be offered to the users of the roads. This project covers the known as ARTS corridor which links the traffic coming from Portugal with Europe and which mainly use the South Atlantic axis. Regarding SERTI, which covers the Mediterranean axis, there are very heavy traffic flows between France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Andorra, particularly during the summer and winter holidays. To manage these flows in a sustainable way, the SERTI and ARTS partners are currently developing traffic management and user information services using Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). In both projects the work is co-ordinated to ensure that services are implemented both, regionally and internationally in a seamless way. This will maintain the continuity and quality of the services available to the road users of the Trans-European-Network for Transport (TEN-T) in the southern European region. One of the first goals of ARTS project was to know the situation of the roads, not only from the infrastructure point of view but the movement of vehicles (traffic) and opinion of the drivers in different matters that have some effect in their trips. Via surveys and studies carried out in previous phases of both projects and using the traffic data obtained in their data capture stations, the authors have been able to observe the high percentage of heavy vehicles that daily go through the roads of the SERTI and ARTS corridors. In this way in Summer 1998 for light vehicles and in 1999 for Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGV) big surveys were carried out in coordination in France, Portugal and Spain based on enquiries and questionnaires. The results of the questionnaires/enquiries done for HGV can be currently considered the main source for impact information/assessment for later stages of ARTS project.
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