£3 million from EEC for• new technology
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THE COMMON MARKET plans to establish a .V.3 million fund for developing new transport technology.
The report to be debated in the European Parliament next month calls on the EEC Commission to start preparing research projects next year with funds being made available in the 1987 budget.
Dutch MEP Florus Wijsenbeck, author of the report, says that Europe's transport systems are "costly, outdated and uncompetitive" viz a' vis the US and Japan.
Research projects should be aimed at cutting the travelling time of passengers and freight, rationalising maintenance and production costs and saving energy.
The report urges the EEC Commission in Brussels which will have to organise the research and allocate funds to concentrate on certain fields.
These include the development of computer systems for emission control, fuel economy and adjusting suspension and the new signalling techniques which warn drivers of such dangerous weather as fog or snow etc, and traffic flow conditions.
On the railways, the report stresses the need to promote the EEC-wide research programme. It says national programmes being carried out separately in Britain, France, West Germany and Italy are self-defeating arid cause duplication.
Wijsenbeek champions the use of pipelines to transport slurry, coal, or stone pit products which he says are more competitive than road, rail and inland waterways.
He complains that up to now the ,EEC has not taken adequate consideration of this "neglected mode of transportwhich embodies new technology.