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The main goal of this Seminar was to understand the relationship between transport economics research and policymaking.
In Europe, there is an extremely wide range of research approaches (a single government agency or several organisations, a national research programme or one-off contracts, etc.). What do these approaches have in common and what is the ideal research structure? With regard to researchers and research sponsors, monopolies should be avoided. Links between researchers and policymakers need to be as direct as possible. And it is also important that research findings be presented by communication specialists and disseminated very early on, before the final stages of research.
Drawing on the presentation and analysis of national experiences, the Seminar spawned numerous recommendations that can help to define a national research policy, and suggested ways in which researchers and policymakers can organise the relationship between economic research and policymaking in the transport sector.
The report discusses the prospects for shifting more travel to the most efficient modes and reducing travel growth rates, improving vehicle fuel efficiency by up to 50% using cost-effective, incremental technologies, and moving toward electricity, hydrogen, and advanced biofuels to achieve a more secure and sustainable transport future. If governments implement strong policies to achieve this scenario, transport can play its role and dramatically reduce CO2 emissions by 2050.
Much of the current policy debate has considered infrastructure charges as a form of “fiscal” instrument for managing transport demand. The Round Table analysed the opportunities for setting infrastructure service prices so that they also provide guidance for the supply of services. It discussed the possibilities of increasing the finances available for transport infrastructure investment and maintenance by introducing a quasi-market for transport infrastructure services. The general public impression is that charges are a just another tax increase in disguise. Infrastructure charging that uses a mix of “fees for service” and capacity expansion criteria is expected to correct this impression, and thus to improve the political acceptability of infrastructure pricing.
Surface transport plays a fundamental role in nearly all social and economic activity. Providing and maintaining the infrastructure consumes enormous resources. Thus, it is essential that this be carried out in the most efficient and effective way possible.
Many options are available to provide surface transport infrastructure – public ministries and agencies, public-private partnerships (PPPs), state-owned companies, private and non-profit entities, and outright privatisation. There are also various means of paying for it, including user charging, subsidies, public borrowing or private financing.
This report examines key principles that should be considered by governments in deciding how to provide and pay for surface transport infrastructure, with a view to best serving societies’ needs and employing public resources. It also considers the key issues that must be resolved in making more use of private financing and expertise.
This Round Table is one of a series of research events to discuss tools to improve transport planning. It addressed the macroeconomic effects of transport infrastructure policies, and aimed at identifying analytical and empirical tools that could determine the overall volume of public expenditure for transport infrastructure investment. It also sought to identify state-of-the-art methods for assessing the macroeconomic impact of transport infrastructure investment. Background papers were provided by David Canning (Harvard University), Charles Hulten (University of Maryland) and Andreas Kopp (OECD/ECMT Transport Research Centre).
As the countries of Central and Eastern Europe undergo radical economic upheavals, the question of pan-European transport is brought very sharply into focus. The transport system cannot be viewed simply in terms of the volume of traffic moving from one particular place to another but must be seen as a whole both theoretically and pragmatically in terms of specific projects. What infrastructure is to be selected? Which method of organising transport "markets" is to be preferred? How can needs logically dictated by urgency -- catering to expanding traffic flows despite inadequate transport networks -- be reconciled with such longer-term imperatives as environmental protection or integrating Central and Eastern Europe into a vast area of cultural and economic relations? Specialists attending Round Table 95 addressed all of these issues and tried to discern realistic boundaries for what can be accomplished today.
Transport networks in Europe are insufficiently integrated and subject to widespread and increasing congestion, particularly on the roads. This publication reviews these issues and, more specifically, examines the problem of providing better access to Western Europe for peripheral regions and for Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the need to upgrade networks.
Current responses to these problems are inadequate. Statistics and analytical tools are lacking, national approaches are highly differentiated, and analyses and concepts are rudimentary and overly sectoral.
This publication analyses, on an homogeneous basis, the inland transport infrastructures, the investment forecasts and the main traffic flows in 30 European countries of the ECMT. This comparative presentation may be considered as a first step towards better knowledge of the European background.
Land links between Europe and Asia can offer a viable alternative to sea transport. However, the provision of efficient land links between Europe and Asia requires appropriate policy decisions on issues such as the development of adequate infrastructure and the removal of regulatory or institutional barriers that prevent the development of efficient transport services. This publication features the recommendations approved by the Ministers and the “Report on Trends in Europe-Asia Trade and Consequences for Transport." It also includes the plan of action approved by Ministers to facilitate intermodal transport between Europe and Asia and the conclusions of a previous seminar in Kiev on “Intermodal Transport between Europe and Asia: Opportunities and Challenges”.
Globalisation and advances in information and communication technologies are reshaping the world’s trading patterns. Today’s internationally competitive businesses work through strategic, integrated global networks designed to deliver efficient and high-quality response to demands from anywhere in the world. This trend has given rise to the terms "global logistics" or "supply-chain management". In addition, growing environmental concerns require that logistics should not only be efficient; they should also contribute to sustainable development.
The OECD TRILOG project aimed to provide insights into these key issues through an exchange of experiences relating to freight transport logistics in the Asia-Pacific, Europe and North American regions. This report attempts to identify constraints and address issues common to the three regions, and suggest possible solutions and approaches that could facilitate the development of policies to promote efficient and sustainable international logistics.
While deregulation and privatisation in the transport sector have led to increases in productivity in general, not all reform hopes have materialised. In particular, the reform of the provision of infrastructure services has not caused the expected mobilisation of private resources, and concession relations have been less stable and less efficiency-enhancing than expected. In view of current discussions of reform results, the Round Table focused on the following issues:
- What are the limits for deregulation?
- Which are the crucial factors that necessitate regulation?
- What is the role of the transaction costs of regulation?
- What is the cost of regulation?
Efforts that primarily focus on incremental change in systems that are unsustainable by design are one of the main barriers to scaling up climate action. This report applies the OECD well-being lens process to the transport sector. It builds on the report Accelerating Climate Action and encourages countries to focus climate action on delivering systems that - by design - improve well-being while requiring less energy and materials, and thus producing less emissions. The report identifies three dynamics at the source of car dependency and high emissions: induced demand, urban sprawl and the erosion of active and shared transport modes. The report also provides policy recommendations to reverse such dynamics and reduce emissions while improving well-being, from radical street redesign, to spatial planning aimed at increasing proximity, and policies to mainstream shared mobility. Analysis also shows why the effectiveness and public acceptability of carbon pricing and policies incentivising vehicle electrification can significantly increase after policy reprioritisation towards systems redesign.
The transport sector currently faces a number of disruptions related to geopolitics, climate change and energy security. Transport system resilience refers to the sector’s capacity to deal with, adapt to and recover from such disruptions. This report sets out the main disruptions to transport systems worldwide. It explores ways to reduce uncertainty by assessing vulnerabilities, and the main mitigation and adaptation measures required to ensure transport systems function in times of crisis.
Advances in medicine make the ageing of populations in developed countries inevitable. These populations, however, will exhibit new and different characteristics, particularly in the transport sector as, unlike previous generations, they will have made widespread use of the car. How will they meet their travel needs in the future? Until now rail transport, unlike car or bus transport, has been losing its elderly clientele. Can this trend be reversed? For the frail elderly, whose needs are similar to those of the disabled, suitable services have yet to be set up. How can the mobility needs of the frail elderly, whose population is destined to grow, be met in the future? The dispersal of residential areas and the concentration of businesses and shops in large malls on the outskirts of cities will also pose serious problems as the population starts to age. Road safety, too, could suffer the adverse effects of declining driving skills among the elderly. The mobility of ageing populations undoubtedly has many implications that can no longer be ignored.
Round Table 112 reviews the experiences of various countries and makes a number of recommendations for policy-makers who wish to adopt a comprehensive approach to this issue.
Over the past decades, many OECD countries' transport sectors have become more decentralised. This report examines whether the economic benefits and experiences of decentralisation have been positive. It finds that the answers vary according to the mode of transport, the type of decentralisation, and transport users' representation in the process of decision-making.
The linkage between transport and economic development is a highly contentious issue which has generated considerable debate and an abundant literature. There is a firmly-held belief among politicians that investment in transport infrastructure promotes economic development and, by extension, employment. However, this belief is not borne out by scientific analysis, which would seem to indicate that the impact of this type of investment on employment and economic development remains limited, at least in developed countries, and at the purely regional level can even prove negative.
The Round Table set out to clarify this issue by analysing the arguments for and against the presumed linkage between "transport infrastructure" and "economic development". This provided a basis on which it could draw conclusions regarding the evaluation methods of investment commonly used. The debate ended with a review of the basic policy issue of whether or not a link existed between transport and economic growth.
The Round Table examined large-scale sporting, cultural and festive events in Europe and the rest of the world, and noted that setting ambitious targets contributes to the quality of the event. Almost every experience is unique and one of the main conclusions of the Round Table is that a record should be kept of each event with regard to its organisation and staging requirements. In this way, an event “memory” could be built up and made available to any would-be event organiser. The Round Table is the first stage in this process.
With the removal of many trade policy barriers, further international economic integration depends largely on the reduction of trade costs originating in the transport sector. This Round Table presents three papers focusing on the structure and development of international transport costs over the past decades and the benefits to be expected from investment in international transport facilities and the reduction of the costs of crossing borders. The papers were provided by David Hummels (Purdue University), Anthony Venables (London School of Economics and Centre for Economic Policy Research) as well as Harry Broadman and John S. Wilson (World Bank).
Leisure-related transport is a poorly known and widely underestimated phenomenon. And yet, it generates more traffic than journey-to-work travel. Indeed, the great number of leisure activities that involve transport range from shopping, visiting family or friends and sporting activities to local and international tourism.
This book sets out to describe and analyse leisure-related transport in terms of flow size, points of concentration, modes of transport, temporal trends and structural changes. It then examines the consequences that growth in leisure activities could have for transport policy: integrating local and long-distance transport, increasing the use of environmentally-friendly means of transport, promoting local recreational trips or improving the living environment. This may be seen as a genuine opportunity for policymakers: in responding to the challenge posed by leisure-related transport they can indeed respond to the challenges posed by any kind of transport.