Chapter 1 - Transport Demand and Factors Affecting It

Abstract

This chapter deals with factors affecting transport demand. First, the impact of transport on the various aspects of human life is assessed. The basic definitions and metrics of transport demand, along with an account of their historical evolution, are provided. This chapter explains how transport demand influences all components and activities of the transport system: planning, design, construction, maintenance, operation, level of saturation, fleet, personnel, commercial and tariff policy, revenues. The overwhelming and revolutionary effects of new technologies on transport demand are explored. The principal drivers (income and purchasing power, technological evolutions, travel costs, social attitudes and lifestyle, population, urban development, international trade, industrial evolutions) for both passenger and freight transport are identified and analyzed, and their evolution over time is examined. The correlation between transport demand and economic activity is studied extensively. This chapter also provides a survey of whether there exists some form of coupling (similar rates of growth of transport and gross domestic product [GDP]) or decoupling (a break in the link between transport and GDP). Indexes that testify as to the existence (or not) of coupling or decoupling and factors affecting the degree of decoupling are presented. Other factors of the internal and external environment of a transport activity (such as human resources, energy, environmental effects, institutional framework, globalization, and competition) are investigated. The various forms of elasticities are described.