Transport Policies and the Environment; Regulation and Taxation

Abstract

Transport is an important and radipdly growing activity in modern society. It is an essential element of many production processes where movement of goods or labour is required (freight transport, business travel, commuting). But it also plays an important role in the consumption sector where households need travel for leisure, shopping and other activities. Moreover, transport itself is an important industry in many countries. In the Netherlands, for example, it contributes 8 percent to the GDP, whereas for the European Economic Community this is 7 percent. A clear relationship can be envisaged between total population growth and economic growth on the one hand, and total mobility on the other. But mobility has grown more than proportionally relative to these two indicators. A number of reasons account for this disproportionate growth. First, economic activities have diversified while production has become more specialized and spatially segregated. This has resulted in an increasing movement of freight and services between firms and between units of multi-plant firms. The impact of these trends on freight transport was reinforced by new developments in the logistics of goods handling, especially the so called ‘just-in-time’ principle, which is relatively transport intensive. Here, stock-in-trade is held as low as possible, in order to minimize capital losses and save storage space. Second, the spatial pattern of firms and households has become more dispersed, due to the large suburbanisation process of the last decades, resulting in longer travel distances. This process was facilitated by large investments in road transport infrastructure. Third, due to the improved standard of life, private car ownership has grown dramatically in the last decades.KeywordsPublic ChoicePublic TransportEmission FactorTransport ModeTransport SectorThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.