The National Road Administrations proposing to establish ERA-NET ROAD are all present or incoming members of the Conference of European Directors of Roads (CEDR), formally the Western European Road Directors (WERD). CEDR is a forum of Directors of the National Road Administrations from the EU member states, along with Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. Its purpose is to increase the informal partnerships between the National Road Administrations and provide a channel through which their collective expertise and interests can be presented to the EC, international organisations, industry and other stakeholders. Although CEDR will not direct the activity undertaken by ERA-NET ROAD, it fully supports the proposal and will provide an effective mechanism to continue to deliver cooperation once the EC funding period is complete and a steady-state is reached. ERA-NET ROAD will see considerable benefit from the informal partnerships established through CEDR. The communication network already established between the research directors will allow rapid substantial progress to be made on ERA-NET ROAD.
Other coordination activity occurs through the Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories (FEHRL) and the Forum of European Road Safety Research Institutes (FERSI). The members of FEHRL and FERSI are research providers, which bring about increased cooperation between national road research laboratories by promoting research on road transport and safety issues common to many countries. However, FEHRL and FERSI cannot act as coordinating bodies in an ERA-NET, because they do not manage research funds, but rather conduct R&D work based on contracts with CEDR members and other research funding bodies.
Despite the activity undertaken through CEDR, FEHRL and FERSI, there has been limited cooperation and coordination between different National Road Administrations on research relating to the management and operation of the road network. However, some examples of joint research include:
- Small scale collaboration between Norway, Sweden and Finland on winter maintenance and cold climates; and
- Cooperation between the Netherlands and Germany on the "Innovation Programme Noise" and the "Leiser Strassenverkehr" programme, which undertook research into possible solutions regarding the current and expected noise problems on the road infrastructure.