Top Caribbean Transportation Stakeholders Gather for IRF Congress
With more than 160 delegates from 28 countries gathered in Port of Spain, Trinidad, the IRF’s Caribbean Regional Congress has once again established itself as the premier event where transportation policy makers and industry practitioners offer solutions to the growing needs of the region. During the three-day event,speakers from a host of institutions including the Caribbean Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the Andean Development Corporation and the US National Transportation Safety Board discussed a range of industry challenges, from resilient road design to safer roads for all users.
In an interview delivered on the sidelines Intertraffic Amsterdam, IRF’s Executive Vice President, Michael Dreznes makes a strong case for systematic road safety impact assessments whenever roads are being built or rehabilitated. “Road safety auditors and assessors must be involved from the design stage when changes that would improve safety can be made at little or no cost” according to Dreznes.
Trinidad & Tobago MOT Presented IRF Find A Way Award
The IRF’s has awarded its prestigious “Find a Way Award” to the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Transport in recognition of the government’s commitment to the United Nations Decade of Action goal of reducing global road traffic fatalities by 2020. Accepting the award, Transport Minister Stephen Cadiz noted that the country had seen a spectacular 22% year-on-year drop in fatal traffic injuries.
IRF Strengthens Road Management Capacity in Mozambique
150 transportation officials in Mozambique were exposed to state of the art practices in the areas of performance-based maintenance and road safety over the course of a three-day capacity-building program assembled by IRF. Using examples of successful approaches in other countries, instructors provided participants with practical steps and instruments with application to road projects currently underway in the country.
IRF Facilitates Study Tour in Argentina and Brazil
Senior officials from the Ugandan Ministry of Transport met with their Latin American counterparts to review applied practices in implementing rehabilitation and maintenance contracts. IRF has been encouraging road agencies to examine the merits of output and performance-based road contracts as a means to lower operating costs and streamline innovation in road management.
Pictured: Ugandan Commissioner for Infrastructure Ishmael Magona and Argentinian National Roads Authority Administrator Nelson Periotti
The International Road Federation is a non-governmental, not-for-profit organization with the mission to encourage and promote development and maintenance of better, safer and more sustainable roads and road networks.
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