The future of interurban passenger transport - bringing citizens closer together: Symposium summary and conclusions. 18th International Symposium on Transport Economics and Policy, Madrid, Spain, 16-18 November 2009

The Symposium brought together leading transport researchers from around the world to explore a range of issues under the general theme of 'the future for interurban passenger transport'. A first set of papers investigates what drives demand for interurban passenger transport and infers how it may evolve in the future. The remaining papers investigate transport policy issues that emerge as key challenges from the long-run view on demand: when to invest in high-speed rail, how to regulate to ensure efficient operation, how to assign infrastructure to different types of users (e.g. cars and trucks), what role for information provision, and how to manage environmental impacts. Closing remarks summarized insights from the discussions from an academic and policy-making perspective

Competitive interaction between airports, airlines and high-speed rail: Summary and conclusions

This paper summarizes, structures, and provides some context for discussions of the Round Table mentioned in the title. The first part of the paper focuses on sources of market power for airports and on policy responses. When an airport is congested and competition with other airports is limited, regulation may be justified, and the dual till approach likely works best. In other cases, however, policy should establish conditions for competition to emerge as much as possible, instead of attempting to design a general regulatory framework. The second part of the paper discusses elements of climate change policy in aviation. Including aviation in emission trading schemes is a sensible idea, but should not be expected to produce major cuts in CO2 emissions from aviation; containing its growth possibly is a more realistic, yet ambitious and not necessarily socially optimal, objective. High-speed rail is justified in some situations, but is not a general alternative for air travel and certainly not a second-best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aviation

Stimulating low-carbon vehicle technologies: Summary and coclusions

If the transport sector is to make deep cuts to its carbon emissions, it is necessary to reduce the carbon-intensity of travel. Reducing travel itself, at some times and places, is sometimes justified but it is extremely unlikely that under expected global economic development patterns overall demand will decline. This holds true even if there is saturation in some markets and demand management policies are widely adopted. Technological change is therefore crucial. The emerging view is that the focus for decarbonising transport should be first to improve the fuel efficiency of conventional engines and then gradually introduce alternative technologies

Security, risk perception and cost-benefit analysis: Summary and conclusions

Security concerns are high on the political agenda in many countries because of the widespread perception that security is increasingly threatened by intentional malicious acts including terrorist attacks. While terrorism has a long history and measures to maintain and improve security are in place, major events - including but not limited to the 9/11 attacks - have triggered stronger action to improve security. In this context, much attention goes to maintaining secure transport for two reasons. First, many transport facilities and vehicles are appealing targets for terrorist attacks because of the concentration of potential victims. Second, transport can act as a conveyor for terrorist attacks, e.g. by moving weapons into ports or by turning airplanes into weapons. In both cases, the difficulties in protecting the many potential targets while maintaining smooth transport operations strengthens the appeal of transport targets

Transport outlook 2009: Globalisation, crisis and transport

This second ITF Transport Outlook continues building towards a full-fledged Transport Outlook, building upon the first Outlook (JTRC, 20081). The 2008 Outlook investigated the relation between expected GDP evolution and the demand for road transport, pointing out that transport demand and CO2-emissions could well turn out higher than commonly assumed given the projected evolution of GDP, and underlining the potential of improvements of fuel efficiency in controlling CO2-emissions from road transport. These topics were developed further in the '50 by 50 Global Fuel Economy Initiative'.2 The 2009 Outlook considers two themes that are closely linked to the International Transport Forums's them for the 2009 meeting in Leipzig: Transport for a global economy - Challenges and opporturnities in the downturn. First, in Section 2, we focus on the evolution of GDP itself and how this evolution interacts with transport demand and investments in transport infrastructure. The analysis is a first brush at gauging the potential impacts of the economic and financial crisis. Specifically, we consider (a) the impact of the aggregate demand shock on the evolution of global GDP, (b) the need and potential for a rebalancing of global growth patterns, with their implications for trade and transport demand, and (c) the consequences of the widening funding gap for transport infrastructure investments. Second, in Sections 3 through 5, we discuss projections of the demand for road transport, aviation, and maritime transport. For road transport, more modest global growth leads to slower growth of the vehicle stock and of CO2-emissions, but the basic messages of the 2008 Outlook continue to hold. For aviation, we attempt to disentangle the effects of economic growth and of increased openness of markets on volume growth, and find that the latter is an important growth factor. For maritime transport, the focus is on likely development patterns and how they could be affected by the crisis, and how this does (not) affect recommendations for dealing with expected CO2-emissions

Port competition and hinterland connections: Summary and conclusions

Maritime freight transport has experienced strong growth and profound change over recent decades. Freight volumes and container traffic in particular have grown with the ntensification of global trade and the geographical dispersion of production. The industrial organization of the sector has evolved rapidly. These changes have rendered the ports business environment more challenging. Many agents along the supply chain have engaged in horizontal and vertical integration of activities. This has lead to more efficiency in the movement of cargo, but has reduced the number of players, with an attendant risk of abuse of market power. The market power of the ports vis-à-vis shippers and shipping companies has become correspondingly weaker. The rapid expansion of trade has led to fast growth of throughput in many ports. As a result, in many large gateway ports, local communities are increasingly concerned about the negative impacts of port activity, including local pollution and congestion. The greenhouse gas emissions generated by freight traffic are also a growing policy concern. This paper explores the economic framework in which potential regulatory intervention to address the issues of competition, air pollution, congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, and financing and provision of infrastructure should be considered

Better economic regulation: The role of the regulator

Good transport services contribute strongly to the productivity of an economy and extend the range of activities accessible to consumers. Good services require adequate infrastructure and reasonable usage conditions to that infrastructure. Much transport infrastructure is capital intensive and lumpy. Such cost structures imply that there will be few service providers. In some circumstances the structure of costs and technology is such that economic regulation is the best way to drive efficient outcomes. Achieving the right governance structures - including the question of when to regulate and how to regulate - is central to performance of the sector and the subject of this paper, which summarises discussions at a Roundtable held in December 2010

Improving the practice of cost benefit analysis in transport

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is widely recognized to be helpful, even indispensible, for making good decisions on what transport projects to fund. It essentially aims to figure out which projects offer the best value for money, one of the core criteria for making decisions. However, the practical relevance of cost-benefit analysis does not always live up to its appeal in principle. One problem is that there is disagreement about what to include in both the costs and the benefits side of the analysis, so that value for money is not always a fully transparent concept. A second problem is that value for money is only a partial criterion for decision-making, leading to disagreement about the relative importance of the results from CBA compared to other inputs into the decision-making process. Discussions at the Roundtable aimed to shed light on these conceptual problems by analysing the practice of CBA and comparing approaches to it in different countries. In short the aim was to identify a checklist of items that should be included in a socially relevant cost-benefit analysis, i.e. analysis that can be produced in reasonable time and at reasonable cost but is good enough to help resolve trade-offs

Implementing congestion charging: Summary and conclusions

The Round Table addressed the broad question of what research and experience tell us about how to arrive at a successful introduction of congestion charging schemes. Attention was limited mostly to urbanized areas where road traffic congestion is or may become an issue. Success means (a) that a policy is implemented, (b) that it works, (c) that it is accepted by actual and potential users, and (d) that it generates benefits for society overall. In order to shed light on these dimensions of success, lessons are drawn from more and less successful attempts to implement charges. In addition, we ask if and how the evolving understanding of the economics of road traffic congestion charging might affect the assessment of congestion charging policy. The conclusions in Section 4 summarize the main recommendations for policy-makers that contemplate the introduction (or the removal) of congestion charges

Transport outlook 2010: The potential for innovation

This paper provides evidence on and discussion of recent developments in global transport markets and analyzes what policies look most promising for stabilizing CO2-emissions from light-duty vehicles. In the aftermath of the economic crisis, recovery is uncertain and unevenly spread across the globe. This has potential impacts on global trade patterns and commodity flows, and hence on key freight transport flows. For the management of future greenhouse gas emissions from transport, our analysis strongly suggests that technologies to improve fuel economy and ultimately transform the energy basis of transport are the key, as there are very strong upward pressures on demand volumes. This of course does not mean that demand management in transport is unjustified or does not contribute at all to greenhouse gas abatement, but its potential is limited so that technological improvement is at the core of climate change policy in the transport sector