On April 23 and 24, ECTRI held its 2025 Spring General Assembly hosted by the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI).
The first day featured the formal meeting led by ECTRI President, Ingrid Skogsmo, who presented for approval the ECTRI Implementation and Action Plan for the period of 2025-2026. Alongside, the new Thematic Groups (TG) and Task Forces (TF) structure and scope as well as their new leadership teams were also approved. TG and TF will run for the next two years, and new leadership will be soon announced. Stay tuned!
The financial situation of the association was reviewed and the annual accounts 2024 approved. Furthermore, the new ETRR journal Advisory Board was elected. The seven elected members will start their 3 years mandate from July 1st, 2025. More information will follow.
The meeting was also the occasion to get to know more about opportunities offered by Transport Research Arena (TRA) 2026 to take place in Budapest, Hungary from 18th – 21st of May 2026.
The rest of the first day featured social events organized by VTI, including demonstrations of several in-house simulators presented by Magnus Eek and Anders Andersson, and a guided tour followed by a formal dinner at the Flygvapenmuseum (the Swedish Air Force Museum).
The second day of the meeting focused on technical visits and presentations. It began with a VTI introduction by Tomas Svensson, VTI Director General. Following this, Gunnel Göransson led a workshop on resilience with ECTRI members, demonstrating methods for managing complex system dynamics and adapting to unpredictable scenarios. My Weidel then presented the Ride the Future project on autonomous buses and invited GA members to experiment a ride. The event concluded with the visits to two VTI research facilities: the Road Material Laboratory (presented by Bjorn Kalman) and the Crash Safety Laboratory (introduced by Mattias Åkerlund)
ECTRI thanks all Members and VTI experts for their contributions. A special thanks goes to the host, Ingrid Skogsmo and the VTI team for arranging such an engaging programme.