At the kind invitation of PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A. and Instytut Kolejnictwa (IK), the “International Level Crossing Awareness Day” Task Force and 15th ELCF plenary meetings were held respectively on 3 and 4 October in Warsaw.
On 3 October the ILCAD meeting was opened by Ms Katarzyna Kucharek, Head of Division of the Communication and Promotion Department at PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A.
On 4 October the ELCF session was opened by Mr Andrezj Zurkowski, Director General of IK (Instytut Kolejnictwa). He informed participants that the institute was created 60 years ago and is independent from the railways. IK reports directly to the Polish Ministry of Transport and is also evaluated by the Polish Ministry of Science. A few days ago IK obtained the Category A label which is the highest recognition category.
Then Isabelle Fonverne, UIC, Coordinator of ILCAD and ELCF Secretary together with Alan Davies, ELCF Chairman welcomed 35 participants from 17 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, England, Estonia, France, Hungary, Ireland (Rep.), Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovak Republic, Switzerland).
Almost all participants: railway engineers, transport researchers, railway safety inspectors, road and rail representatives from NSAs, level crossing programme managers, traffic psychologists, railway public affairs or communication managers had the opportunity either to present their level crossing safety management, human behaviour issues, and/or the awareness campaigns that they have been organising in their respective country either during ILCAD or throughout 2013; participants then had the opportunity to exchange on best practice as far as improvement of safety through Engineering measures, Enforcement initiatives and finally Education activities are concerned.
Please find the various interesting videos made by partners for their campaigns:
INFRABEL/Belgium
ÖBB/Austria
Operation Lifesaver/Estonia: for their Safety campaign “Notice the Train!”
In addition Ms Rebecca Huang, Economic Affairs Officer at the UNECE Inland Transport Committee (ITC) Division in Geneva, gave an overview of activities carried out by ITC and the UNECE working parties related to transport, the Vienna Convention, road signs and signals, road traffic safety issues…. She also informed participants of the 2nd UN global road safety week held worldwide in all UN economic regions from 6 to 12 May 2013 and the events that took place at UNECE during that week
http://www.unece.org/trans/roadsafe/2nd_grs_week/programme.html
including ILCAD with a round table with experts on level crossing safety, a press conference and ILCAD exhibition which was a great success.
For all presentations on level crossings at the event:
http://www.unece.org/trans/roadsafe/2nd_grs_week/ilcad.html
and read http://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/345
She also confirmed the creation of a UNECE multidisciplinary working party on level crossing safety with a kick off meeting on 20 January 2013 at UNECE in Geneva.
Finally Isabelle Fonverne gave a presentation on various awareness campaigns organised mainly outside Europe (Canada, USA, Argentina, Morocco, Cameroon, Georgia, Mongolia, India, Turkey…) and also European countries that could not send representatives to the meeting (Greece, Spain, Ukraine:
http://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/352 …) we could not mention all of them; to have an idea of the different countries (about 45) that participated in ILCAD 2013 please visit: www.ilcad.org please also read the e-news article on RFF:
http://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/366, e-news article on INFRABEL/Belgium
http://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/342...
We also discussed the results of a questionnaire sent by UIC to all ILCAD partners, including:
Do you want ILCAD to continue: 100% Yes
Next steps: Many partners wishing to celebrate this event on a fixed date during the first week of June, we finally fixed the date of the next ILCAD edition for Tuesday 3 June 2014.
Partners will again organise their national campaign around the international event, be it only one day or one week or one month … The topic on 3 June is once more LEVEL CROSSING SAFETY but partners of ILCAD may again add other important railway safety issues such as trespass, safety on platforms….
We discussed a new public to target in 2014: professional drivers (trucks, buses, even emergency vehicles …). This does not prevent us from continuing to raise awareness among other members of the public (children, teenagers, adults…). Partners agreed to share communication materials on a collaborative basis such as existing videos, posters or leaflets on professional drivers to prepare a new ILCAD video clip and posters.
It has also been decided to organise the 4th UIC/ILCAD drawing contest (over 500 drawings received in 2013) – for information on the previous contest read:
http://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/341
Finally participants had the opportunity to visit three different categories of level crossing in the suburbs of Warsaw
