ECF Secretary General Bernhard Ensink joined sessions at the TRB 2015 in January when he was in Washington for meetings. He would like to share with you a few impressions and lessons learnt.

“TRBs are huge conferences, amazing number of sessions – the printed A4 program book has 372 pages. Fortunately there is a very good app for registered participants to plan efficiently the most interesting sessions and to search for the speakers etc. Search for cycling and you get the hits: 1 Exhibitioner, 4 Lectern Sessions and Events, 2 meetings, 50+ Poster presentations, 2 poster sessions and 35 presentations. They work with a lot of committees that review applications in their field for the presentations. One of them is the ANF20, the Bicycle Transportation Committee. There seems to be an interest in that committee to collaborate more with European Academics. I can imagine that it is an interesting conference for academics who want to build relationships with US institutions and researches. It is much less lively than a Velo-city Conference – the formats a very standard, and there are a lot of meetings. Actually the title fits to this: they call it the ‘Annual Meeting’ of the TRB.” - ECF Secretary General Bernhard Ensink

Bernhard focused on an issue in the world of sustainable transport that came up in meetings at side events of the Climate summit Lima in December 204: Adaptation to the impact of climate change (extreme weather) on transport infrastructure and systems. Based on the sessions Bernhard Ensink joint at the TRB he had to conclude that cycling is not taken in account yet as a mode that can play a good role in Risk Management Plans as a resilient mode of transport after e.g. break downs of public transport systems, power supply and gasoline distribution. It could be a ‘catchy’ issue to get more attention from administrations for the potential of cycling. He will bring this issue to a conference on Winter Cycling in the Netherlands to see how this idea will be perceived.