The ESPORG (European Secure Parking Organisation) conference 2019 took place in Brussels last November 7th. It was organised in cooperation with International Road Transport Union (IRU) and the EC. The conference was opened by Mr Dirk Penasse, general manager of ESPORG followed by a number of speakers.
Mr. Louis Hendriks (EU EIP activity leader National Access Points), one of the speakers, explained the administration aspects of exchanging Truck Parking data to the National Access Points (NAP) in Europe by using the new self-declaration form. The purpose of this form is to harmonise and reduce administration burden for SSTP operators. The self-declaration is a result of a joint effort between EU EIP and ESPORG. For the SSTP operators this is a practical tool to promote their Truck Parking to truck drivers. Find the uniform self-declaration form for Truck Parking and more on the EIP NAP webpage.
Mr. Fredric Maas presented the EU Parking Academy supporting practitioners who would like to obtain additional knowledge on safe and secure truck parking areas. These courses are in line with:
o the rules of the new certification EU-Parking Standard
o the recommendations of the Study on Safe and Secure Parking places for Trucks (Feb 2019)
The main topic in the panel discussion was how to handle the urgent need for more safe and secure truck parking areas in Europe.
In the afternoon it was explained by Mr. Frederik Rasmussen (DG MOVE Road Transport) how to make use of the available EU funds (CEF) with regards to the budget of EUR 60 million for building and/or upgrading safe and secure truck parking areas in Europe. Deadline to submit applications for funding is 26 February 2020. Read more. The proposed works for optimizing the use of existing safe and secure truck parking areas through static and dynamic parking information, have to comply with Commission Delegated Regulation No (EU) 885/2013 and apply Union standards (e.g. DATEX2) and Guidelines (Easyway Deployment Guidelines).
As a further contribution from EU EIP to the Truck Parking community, a recently published Quality Framework for Intelligent Truck Parking Services was presented. Torsten Geißler, leader of EIP activity “Determining Quality of European ITS Services”, explained the concept and goals of that framework.
Based on this, the session served to:
- highlight the relevance of Data Quality in Intelligent Truck Parking Services,
- discuss individual Quality perspectives,
- and set the stage for continuing exchange with the Truck Parking community on Quality issues.
The slides from this session can be found here.
The Quality Framework has been previously introduced here.
Regarding the urgent needs to improve the Truck Parking situation in Europe, EU EIP and ESPORG will continue close cooperation in the field of ITS.
Read more about NAPs in Europe