What is the STP Road Safety Advisory?
The STP – Road Safety Advisory as hosted by the European Investment Advisory Hub (the Hub), is a gateway to advisory services to support the uptake of funding and financing opportunities for projects that improve road safety. It promotes road safety as an area of transport investment offering guidance and support to potential project promoters from the public and private sectors.
What can the STP Road Safety Advisory offer?
There are various sources of funding and financing available for project promoters for investments contributing to safer transport. Through the STP - Road Safety Advisory, the Hub can help promoters identify and access these sources, such as grant co-funding through EU programmes including the European Structural Investment funds (regional funds) and the Connecting Europe Facility. The EIB offers investment loans and framework loans as well as support through intermediated loans. Other International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and National Promotional Banks and Institutions (NPBIs) may also offer loans and guarantees for eligible investments. Such public sector financial support should attract and lever the involvement of the private sector to participate in the financing of safer transport investments.
For projects that are not yet fully prepared and/or not yet ready to access finance, tailored technical assistance may improve the maturity and quality of the project. Through resources made available through the STP - Road Safety Advisory, project promoters have access to a full range of technical advisory services to, inter alia, support feasibility studies, develop project concepts, help improve the economic and financial viability of the projects, guide the preparation of safe transport investment programmes, and increase the eligibility of projects to receive EU funding/financing. When appropriate, the Hub may complement the technical assistance provided through JASPERS.
Consistent with the Hub’s mandate to provide market development advisory support, the STP - Road Safety Advisory will maintain a continuous tracking of the technical assistance and access to finance needs of project promoters implementing projects with road safety investments. Such market development activity is intended to ensure support for the creation of adequate funding/financing solutions as well as to contribute to the development of a robust project pipeline of safer transport investments.
It will also carry out a market assessment to establish any further investment needs for road safety and appropriate tools to address them.
Who can benefit from the support?
In keeping with the mandate of the Advisory Hub, STP - Road Safety Advisory support is available free of charge to project promoters within the following categories:
- National and regional road authorities
- Municipalities and local authorities
- Major transport providers
- Authorities with responsibility for communication and enforcement
Private sector project promoters are also able to access advisory support though charges may apply. Interested project promoters are also invited to consult the services available under JASPERS.
How can I benefit from the support?
Please note that the total project costs, including future projects that may result from the requested advisory support, should be greater than €15 million.
What kinds of projects qualify?
Projects could address, for example:
Investment in safer roads
Road safety programmes on entire road networks or on selected sections and junctions with high accident rates. Measures with good impacts on accidents could be for example roundabouts, traffic calming, betters signs and markings, crash barriers, 2+1 roads and forgiving roadsides. Projects that implement remedial measures following up on findings that Member States identified under Directive 2008/96/EC on Road Infrastructure Safety Management (e.g. network safety rankings or, in the near future, network-wide road safety assessments) are also encouraged.
In urban areas in particular but not exclusively, investments in better and safer facilities for cyclists and pedestrians are also encouraged and eligible for support.
Investment in safer vehicles
Investments in large scale fitting of new vehicle safety technologies in commercial vehicle fleets in public procurement or as a retrofitting programme may be considered (for example advanced emergency braking systems, pedestrian and cyclists detection systems, intelligent speed assistance). Also, investments in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) with benefits for safety and efficiency of road transport may be considered (such as communication and information technologies to improve safety through integrated roadside infrastructure-based systems and in-vehicle systems).
Investments targeting safer road users
Variable Speed Limits systems (VSL) and driver assistance systems such as Automated Speed Enforcement systems (ASE), incentivising road users to employ appropriate speed discipline.
Why is safety on the road a top priority?
Safety is of primary concern across all means of transport. Air, rail and waterways are the safest modes whereas roads claim 97% of all transport fatalities worldwide. Even though EU roads are among the safest in the World, more than 25.000 people are killed and 135.000 seriously injured in traffic on EU roads every year, causing unnecessary and unacceptable human suffering and high costs to society.
Fostering investment in safer transport is a key part of the EU’s Strategic Action Plan on Road Safety. Various funding and financing solutions already exist, for example for safety upgrades of road infrastructure. However, up to now these funding possibilities have been used only to a limited extent. Awareness of the different instruments is low, and suitable solutions for some types of road safety actions are missing.
EU action on road safety
The European Commission has put forward a new and ambitious road safety agenda, which includes a Road Safety Policy Framework for 2021-2030 and a Strategic Action Plan on Road Safety. This has brought road safety to the top of the EU’s political agenda. The EIB is already providing financing for transport safety measures and is now further enhancing its efforts to expand its lending, blending and advisory activities in support of transport projects with safety elements.