Traffic engineering – the basis of a mobile society

Like water and energy supplies, traffic engineering, meaning the availability of means of transport for people and goods, is a basic requirement of any developing society and the prerequisite for mobility.

The exploitation of labour market resources, the just-in-time delivery of raw materials, semi-finished and finished products and the import and export trades require carriers that can meet their demands. As it was 165 years ago, the railway network is the most important item of infrastructure for regional and continental goods and passenger traffic alongside the motorway and road network. Owing to the growing demands of comfort, efficiency, environmental protection and safety, the expansion of these networks requires increasingly complex tunnel and bridge constructions. Inland waterways, rivers and canals link the seaports to the economic centres.

In view of the globalization of the world economy, air traffic is exceeding all the growth forecasts – and not only because of the changing leisure-time behaviour of our affluent society. Worldwide passenger figures are rising by about 5% a year and outdated airports near to cities can no longer be expanded for environmental and safety reasons. Consequently, with only limited amounts of building land available, new major airports are being built on manmade islands or offshore floating platforms.

These major airports are well away from the cities and are operated day and night for trafficrelated and economic reasons. Linking them to the cities requires efficient connections to the road network, as well as to the local and longdistance railway networks. The field of traffic engineering offers plenty of opportunity for innovation.

In many countries, private investors are taking on the planning, construction and operation of major projects, as the state is withdrawing from these tasks for which it was formerly responsible. These build-operate-transfer (BOT) or build-operate-own (BOO) projects offer the insurance industry, and particularly engineering insurance, new opportunities in the way of comprehensive, long-term covers for the licensed syndicates of builders and operators.