News

Over three hundred participants from the professional public gathered at the Pardubice Congress Centre on Thursday, 7th September 2023, for the XII Transport Conference which brought together experts in the financing, preparation, construction and actual use of all modes of transport. The event continued the next day with a road fair at the Pardubice Region Road Administration and Maintenance Facility.

Transport Minister Martin Kupka opened the conference by presenting the strategy for the development of transport infrastructure in the Czech Republic in relation to the Pardubice Region. Traditionally, the most interesting lectures included presentations of Jiří Svoboda, Director General of Správa železnic, and Tomáš Tóth, Chairman of the Board of Directors of ČD Cargo. In his speech, the latter dealt with trends and the future of rail freight transport in various aspects (energy, decarbonization, the place of rail transport in the new transport mix) and emphasized that the transport prospect will most likely be reliable combined transport. He literally said: “Decarbonization of transport will necessarily bring savings in electricity consumption which transport as such will need many times more in the future than it does today. Conventional road and rail freight transport must learn to work together.”

Miroslav Němec from the Administration and Maintenance of Roads of the Pardubice Region concluded his presentation in a very interesting way: “Rail and road are not in competition. On the contrary, the volumes of road traffic are so brutal at the moment that even if 50% of the traffic switched to rail, it would not be detrimental at all.”