Gathering detailed European statistics on road freight transport and harmonising them has been the challenge of the Council Regulation 1172/98. Road transport is the most important freight transport mode in the Common Market and therefore worth much attention.t the basis for common rules and definitions in the collection of road freight transport statistics, increasing the scope of variables covered and improving quality of data previously collected under Council directives 78/546/ECC and 89/462/EEC. The main added value of the regulation was the collection of micro data from Member States. At the same time, the level of the regional detail of origins and destinations of road motor vehicles registered in the EU got improved. The availability of detailed data collected according to the above mentioned regulation allowed to respond to the policy demand of measuring the shares of transport performance of the different modes, using the estimation of road freight transport performed on the territory of the EU ('territoriality principle'). This project is best known as 'modal split indicators'. In addition to the inland transport modes (road, rail and inland waterways transport), European air and maritime statistics have allowed to calculate freight transport performance in the European Union. In consequence, it is now possible to assess the importance of road transport on the basis of a nearly harmonised dataset of all major transport modes. This paper will first describe the main aspects of the data collection on road freight transport in the EU according to Council Regulation 1172/98, with a specific focus on data quality improvements. Hence, the freight part of the 'modal split indicators' project will be presented. Finally, the most recent figures on road freight transport and the first estimates on transport performed according to the 'territoriality principle' will be presented, covering both new and old Member States. Data will include also some specific aspects of road freight transport, such as empty journeys and data on transport by age of vehicle. For the covering abstract please see ITRD E135207.
Samenvatting