The big challenge for Road Administrations as for many other bodies in Europe is to combine increased mobility with sustainability as congestion and overloaded roads heavily impact the local economy and environment in many areas. Heavy goods vehicles (HGV) in Europe are increasingly more numerous, heavier and longer. Many people think that the road networks are not adapted to accommodate the increased number of HGVs, nor their larger size or heavier weight. Two northern European countries, Finland and Sweden, have many years of experience with the use of long HGV on their roads. The purpose of this study is to review the experiences in Finland and in Swedenand to encourage other countries to think about a way of minimising the effect of the ever increasing growth in goods transport throughout Europe. The volume of goods transported in Europe will increase substantially overthe next few years and thereby contribute to congestion and overloaded roads. Increasing the efficiency of road freight transport remains an important challenge for all Road Authorities to minimise the negative effects ofroad freight transport. Sweden and Finland experienced good results with long HGV combinations. Positive effects were encountered as far as road wear and tear, the environment, road safety, the economy and the modal splitare concerned. Most European countries should have the possibility to achieve a big increase in efficiency by opening up all or part of their road network to modular HGV combinations with an increased total length. However, for other European countries, the debate remains open. Some are of the opinion that modular HVGs will not contribute to solving the problems of transporting inland more and more freight by roads and bet their future on shifting freight transport from road to rail. It is suggested that, based on the experiences over many years in Finland and in Sweden, this paper will stimulate the discussion concerning the wisdom of introducing modular HGVs in Europe. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
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