The problems of population's free mobility represent one of the rights entailed in the Bill of Basic Rights and Liberties. Its importance for the everyday life is ever growing. These days people demand wider and wider access to mobility: the modern age has brought about a whole range of demands upon transport that some time ago were almost inconceivable. And yet, the growth of the demands is in an abrupt contrast with lessening tolerance to congestion, delays, or low quality of some transportation services. These aspects, which are also stated in the European Union documents, have been incorporated into the very basic aim of the Transport Policy of the Czech Republic and are intrinsic parts of its strategic objectives. There are instruments to decrease the transport volume (for instance, area planning, development of up-to-date information and communication technologies, internalisation of the transport externalities), however; it must be stressed that their function is only limited. The growth of requirements upon transport is in itself a token of modern society, reflects economic and social integration as well as leisure travelling, and produces a number of positive economic and social phenomena. The fundamental condition for ensuring the population's mobility, which is the key concept of the conference and the key subject matter of ST 5, is the existence of high quality transport infrastructure. It is necessary to divide this field into solving the problems of infrastructure in agglomerations and in other areas. Special attention is paid to international (TEN/TINA) and national transport networks. It is necessary to respect both capacity and qualitative perspectives and finish building the basic network of highways and roads. It is necessary to prefer reconstruction that is spatially and environmentally less demanding to building brand new roads; this is consistent with the Transport Policy of the Czech Republic. The problems related to maintenance of roads of various categories represent a special issue. Traffic accident related problems are also an important aspect. The number of people killed on roads is really menacing: there are data saying , that the number of people killed on European roads every day is comparable to a crash of a medium-size aircraft. The issue of the mobility is dealt with in Section 2. There must be a clear concept and time schedule accompanying the development of transport infrastructure. More than a year ago, in January 2001, a document entitled "Time Schedule and Financial Backup of the Realisation of the Proposal for Transport Infrastructure Development in the Czech Republic" was created. The purpose of this material is to set out this concept, funding method and time schedule. Besides the state budget financial help from the European Union is also used in order to ensure the funding, and there may be some other additional resources (such as the PPP concept). The preparation of building new roads and highways is a process, that is structured into definite stages and has clear rules beginning with determining the building corridor, undergoing the EIA process and area decision and ending up with the approval and the actual realisation. Area planning is a parallel process. During this process it is very important to maintain a dialogue with all participating parties (see the Section entitled New Methods of Consulting the Public). The system of investment assessment is also an important part of the development of the road and highway infrastructure. For the Czech Republic a new system HDM - 4 was adjusted . This system is dealt with at the end of this report. Providing public passenger transport services in an area is related especially to the quality of the public passenger transport and to the up-to-date concept of the Individual Car Transport (ICT) involved in the so-called "citizen's network" by means of the "park & ride" systems (P&R - as scattering transport linked to the public passenger transport main lines). The Ministry of Transport and Communications supports the automatic integration by means of financial support in the process of ordering studies concerning transport services accessibility and by other means. In order to justify the need of high quality public passenger transport it is necessary to respect both the social aspect and the capacity, and especially ecological aspect. At this point the principle of the so called "public service obligation" acquires great importance. The purpose of this principle is to define the rules for operation and funding for the public passenger transport lines. And yet we must be aware of the fact that the public services provided in an area cannot concentrate only on a particular transport type, but all transport types must work as a system, i. e. inter-modally. This principle must be followed both in the field of the public passenger transport (as an alternative to ICT) and in the field of goods transport where it is necessary to attempt at finding such ways that will be in accordance with principles of high quality logistics. In other words, it is necessary to attempt at introducing combined transport lines. This should help to optimise the transport system function and reduce the ecological loading of an area. Innovation in the process of replacing technologies is another problem area, that is dealt with. The measures stated above are usually implemented with regard to the situation abroad, especially in the neighbouring countries. Taking into account the Czech Republic's membership in the European Union , that is coming up , we must ensure that the legislation of the Czech Republic is consistent with that of the European Union. At the same time different measures are tested in Czech Republic and if proven are introduced here. From this perspective we must say that the Czech experts' participation in the work of technical committees of PIARC has so far been successful. As far as the realisation of the measures proposed in the everyday practice is concerned , the key issue is still the way of sharing relevant information by all transport experts and providing users with the information. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135448.
Samenvatting