The overall objective of this study is to assist the European Commission with the evaluation of Directive 2008/96/EC on road infrastructure safety management and to investigate possible changes in the light of new technological developments. The specific objectives of the study are: 1) To carry out an ex-post evaluation of the application of Directive 2008/96/EC. What were the main impacts of its application on road safety? What steps were taken to implement the Directive? What is the relevance of the Directive? 2) To provide a preliminary analysis of the possible areas of improvement with regards to road safety and the safety of road infrastructure in particular. Important elements within the study were the stakeholder survey to collect the necessary data and the organisation of a stakeholder conference. This report focuses on the ex-post evaluation, including the results of the stakeholder survey and conference. Minutes of the stakeholder conference can be found on the Commissions’ website and a separate report discusses the main findings of the second task — the preliminary analysis of possible areas of improvement with regards to road safety and safety of road infrastructure in particular. This summary discusses the results of both reports: the ex post evaluation and the results of the preliminary analysis of possible areas of improvement. The ex-post evaluation seeks to gauge the extent or degree to which the Directive has been put into practice across the countries of the EU during the five years after it was adopted. The evaluation also seeks to meaningfully identify the main impacts generated by its implementation by considering a wide range of evaluation criteria. Together, these criteria were used to determine how the Directive has been able to responded to the initial needs and problems of its target beneficiaries and European citizens, the extent to which positive changes that can be attributed to the Directive may be expected to continue to have an effect and whether or not EU level interventions have led to benefits that exceed those that would have been achieved had Member State acted independently. One of the issues considered was whether the objectives of the Directive continue to be relevant to the needs, problems and issues they were designed to target. Finally, the extent to which the Directive can be coherent with the deployment of ITS was a central question. In order to carry out the evaluation, we developed an intervention logic and a methodological framework on the basis of the evaluation criteria of implementation, relevance, effectiveness, sustainability, coherence, utility, efficiency, and EU added value of the legislation. Guided by a set of specific evaluation questions, we used a combination of research tools. These tools included a review of relevant documents and publications, collection and analysis of data from published sources, analysis of the responses provided by Member States and stakeholders to the online survey, analysis of the outcomes of the stakeholder conference and, finally, an interview programme. The latter ones provided additional information and evidence that supported the identification of the main evaluation findings and the development of the main conclusions. Focussing on implementation, all Member States (with the exception of Croatia) have transposed Directive 2008/96/EC and, significantly, many of them have not encountered difficulties in the application of the Directive. Furthermore, evidence suggests that Member States with poorer preDirective levels of road safety performance are those where the application of the Directive has been more robust. Also important, the RISM procedures are applied to non TEN-T roads (national roads, dual carriageways and motorways), thus beyond the scope of the Directive although the degree of compulsion of such application is variable. However, the RISM procedures were not found to have a significant impact in the planning phase in those EU countries where they were already in place, while in those Member States where they were not established the overall impact is also expected to be low. Finally, Member States do not earmark funds to carry out the RISM procedures and costs for the latter are generally incorporated in the overall costs of the road project investments. Concerning relevance, the objectives of the Directive remain fit-for-purpose when considering the overall EU objectives in terms of improved road safety. The Directive has led to an improved and much more consistent regulatory framework compared with the prior system of national legislation. The relevance, however, could be further improved by being more prescriptive. This would also increase the effectiveness of the Directive. For uniformity can be read more on a formal level that on a substantial one as the Directive does not provide any detailed guidance on the application of the RISM procedures, nor harmonisation between Member States is prospectively foreseen. The effectiveness of the Directive can be observed in the changes it has encouraged towards a more systematic approach in dealing with the operational management of infrastructure-related road safety. The Directive has increased the use of cost-effective procedures (e.g. RSAs and RSIs) and has initialled a process that can prospectively produce positive results in terms of correction of the detected road infrastructure deficiencies both on new roads and existing roads. On the other hand, no modification has been triggered on the approach followed by road managers in selecting safety equipment and components. Similarly, no specific improvements in national practices and procedures have been reported as a result of the exchange of best practices between Member States. We also did not observe that the Directive has provided an incentive to a greater degree of exchange of good practices. Equally, despite that training programmes and curricula are established in the larger part of Member States hence suggesting that training and certification process is effectively set up, the Directive has not favoured the mobility of road safety professionals across Member States and, at present, there is no evidence indicating that such mobility is taking place. The changes propped by the Directive in the operation of the Member States’ RISM national practices are expected to last in the long run (sustainability). However, differences in their application still remain within the current detail of the Directive. Also sustainability of funding sources for undertaking these procedures is key. As far as the interlinking with ITS is concerned the Directive (coherence), which in itself does not really focus on ITS, does not really influence the deployment of ITS in a negative or in a positive way. In the light of the EU road safety objectives, the Directive can be considered an adequate instrument since a correlation was observed between having lower fatality rates and having road safety procedures (utility). This indicates that the Directive will most probably positively impact road safety and certainly in countries which did not have these procedures in place before. On efficiency, the application of the Directive is still considered to be too recent to acquire an understanding of whether it has led to a more efficient and cost saving planning and management of the network. Also, Member States do not collect evidence on costs and benefits of the application of the procedures. Costs associated with the follow-up of safety assessment have been reported as the most significant cost category, while no evidence has shown a direct effect on road users of costs generated by the Directive. Concerning benefits, in general terms, the reduction in the number of road victims/injuries can be considered the main benefit of the application of the Directive, but a quantification of them is still not possible. Finally, administrative costs account for nearly one-fifth of the global cost involved in the application of the RISM procedures and are largely borne by national authorities which keep the primary responsibility role for administering the RISM procedures on along the road network. Lastly, Directive 2008/96/EC had the clear benefit (EU added value) to request Member States to have all RISM procedures established in their national law systems and to comply with its requirements within a clear time line. Though contents and practices might be different at national level, a common framework and a common approach is applied. This outcome could not have been achieved through Member States acting independently in developing (or not) their own comparable legislation which would had led to disparities in their application.As a whole, the Directive has certainly triggered a different way of thinking about and dealing with road safety management. Firstly, this is because it has encouraged a generalized use of the Road Safety Infrastructure Management (RISM) procedures which are now established in all Member States and which are based on a minimal set of compulsory rules in the management of the TEN-T roads (in many cases also applied to non-TEN-T roads). It is equally important that the Directive provides a “common language” for carrying out road infrastructure safety management which relies upon a harmonized legislative framework. At a national level, the Directive has instigated a normative and operational process that would not have happened in such a widespread manner without EC intervention. The main weakness of this Directive, by contrast, relates to the limited scope of its application, i.e. this piece of EU legislation only applies to the TEN-T road network and not to non-TEN-T roads. The possibility of extending the requirements stipulated by the Directive to non TEN-T roads was left to the discretion of Member States and, accordingly, the national legislative settings have been developed by most Member States. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting