Chapter 13: The Role of Government Policy towards Railway Freight Transport

As the European Transport Policy formally states its worries about the heavy impacts of freight transport and the growing market share of road transport (European Commission, 2001), two main policy avenues are highlighted: decoupling transport growth and economic growth, and promoting modal shift from road to other less environment-damaging modes, like rail and maritime transport. Let us start by a brief outlook of the trends in these two dimensions.

Freight transport intensity, i.e. the amount of transport activity (measured in tonnes km) by unit of GDP, is steadily growing both in the EU-15 and in the US, but growth of transport intensity is above that of GDP in EU, while this is no longer occurring in the US (see Figure 13.1).