Session 3a: Policy
Where does the growth of road freight transport ends and
what can policy makers do about it?
Loes Aarts, Rijkswaterstaat - Centre for Transport and Navigation, loes.aarts@rws.nl
Lori Tavasszy, TNO Mobility and Logistics, lori.tavasszy@tno.nl
Gerwin Zomer, TNO Mobility and Logistics, gerwin.zomer@tno.nl
Road freight transport has been growing almost uninterrupted in the past decades. And
according to forecast studies worldwide, the growth will continue in the future. The current
economic crisis will only be a temporary dip. The main drivers for the past road freight
transport growth are well known: increase in the global population, emerging new markets,
globalization, increase in international trade and changing patterns of production and
consumption.
Transport in general and road freight transport in particular are essential links in a healthy
economy. The focus of this paper is on road freight transport and this branch of transport
knows some serious disadvantages for society: for the environment, congested traffic flows,
traffic safety and the load on infrastructure and bridges. This poses major challenges on
policy makers to accommodate the growth of road freight transport at the one side, and at the
other side reduce its consequences.
In 2007 this challenge was exactly the reason for the Joint Transport Research Committee of
the OECD and the International Transport Forum to set up a Working Group on Heavy
Vehicles. The central goal of this group was to look for effective public interventions to
increase the efficiency of road freight transport and at the same time control its societal
impact. The results of the working group are presented in the report Moving Freight with
Better Trucks. The authors of this paper wrote the section in that report about transport and
logistics.
For this paper the report Moving Freight with Better Trucks is the point of departure. The
authors are considering the question where the growth of road freight transport will end, but
the main purpose of this paper is to take a logistics view of the possibilities policy makers
have to improve efficiency. From the perspective of controlling societal impact of road
freight transport, the increase of efficiency is desirable. However the concept of efficiency of
policy makers, differ from the concept of the transport sector.
And the side effect of public interventions to improve the quality of life, reduce emissions or
congestion can be an increase of road freight transport. Understanding logistics processes is
therefore necessary to develop effective policies.