(SOFIA) - Road congestion in European countries costs their economies about one percent of gross domestic product annually, but building capacity is not the solution, European transport ministers agreed Wednesday at a conference in Sofia.

Official estimates presented at the European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT) showed that "road congestion costs, including commuting and leisure traffic as well as business and freight traffic, amounts to an average 1 percent of GDP in the European Union, with Britain and France at 1.5 percent."

Meanwhile, air traffic and maritime container traffic are also expected to more than double in the next 20 years, further intensifying rail and road traffic.

"The trend is towards more congestion and, without effective policy intervention, much worse congestion," the attending transport officials from 53 countries concluded in a briefing statement Wednesday.

"That would undermine quality of life and threaten to arrest the trends in trade that have helped drive economic growth in the last decade," the statement added.

"But it is politically unrealistic and economically unsound to try to get rid of congestion completely," ECMT Secretary General Jack Short told journalists on Wednesday.

"We cannot expand capacity as fast as demand is growing. We have to find ways to manage the existing infrastructure capacity better," he added.

Short pointed to existing "severe" problems with traffic at border crossing points, especially between the EU and its neighbouring states, and the visa requirments for international drivers that create bottlenecks at checkpoints.

Improving traffic management and road pricing were mentioned as tools for dealing with congestion but ministers still recognised it would be difficult to convince drivers of the immediate benefits from paying.

Text and Picture Copyright 2007 AFP. All other Copyright 2007 EUbusiness Ltd. All rights reserved. This material is intended solely for personal use. Any other reproduction, publication or redistribution of this material without the written agreement of the copyright owner is strictly forbidden and any breach of copyright will be considered actionable.