ETC Programme 2025

Building the conference programme 

Do you know how a London meeting room, hundreds of strips of paper, lots of Post-it notes, tape and staples, a group of transport people and some coffee, tea and sandwiches are related to the European Transport Conference? That is what is needed to compile the conference programme. A process that, in this digital day and age, is still remarkably analogue. 

This year, twelve Programme Committees, each made up of 6-30 AET members, between them reviewed, scored and categorised almost 400 abstracts submitted for the conference. On the 19th May, in a meeting room in London (kindly hosted by Jacobs), the chairs of these Programme Committees (or their deputies) took on the task to sort all the accepted abstracts in a very full, coherent and attractive 3-day conference programme.

This process is a very hands-on job, finding the best place for each abstract. Grouping them in sessions and streams takes time, with some outside-the-box-thinking and the occasional battle between chairs competing for the same abstract. Please be assured, this all takes place in a friendly atmosphere. At the end of the day, all accepted abstracts end up on a Post-it note, sorted by day and session time. Hence, the term ‘Post-it’ meeting.

As there were some new people joining in, we were very happy that Sally Scarlett, although retired as conference secretary, offered to lend a helping hand. So, everything went smoothly and we are now finalising the programme, which should be online very soon. The authors of the accepted abstracts have all been informed by now.

The 2025 European Transport Conference will offer about 100 interesting sessions to choose from on a wide variety of transport topics. Do join us in September in Antwerp. You can still profit from our early booking fee (until 27 June) so book your place now!

Interested in joining a Programme Committee? Please see more about them on the AET website. Individual members can apply to join directly, whereas organisational members should contact their representative to check their committee allocation availability.