Transport Policy
Transport Policy Report
26/03/2008
A concern for freight transport activity
Freight transport activity has been a concerned because it is necessary to integrate all the different transport modes such as air, rail, road and pipelines, to reach a good situation whereby it would benefit all citizens in making their transport activity more desirable and more efficient in terms of costs and time spent. Moreover, as there is a higher consideration for the environment’s sustainability, the European Commission (EC) is very keen in reducing the number of road transport and directing the movements into rail and water transportation instead.
The advantages of rail transportation will be described in the next point.
Why is an increase in rail’s share if freight transport desirable
According to European road statistics 2007, the usage of rail transport for the transportation of goods is far below the usage of road transport. It is merely 25% of the road transport. Although there has been an increase of the rail transport usage at a rate of 10% over the last 10 years, it is still far below expectations, and some actions need to be taken in order to increase the percentage. The goal is of course to make the usage of rail transport exceeds the usage of road transport.
There is a high desire of EC to increase the usage of rail transportation firstly to make better use of the facility and capacity available. Secondly, rail freight transports are also deemed to be more environmental friendly as they are more efficient in terms of the fuel consumption. Therefore the amount of carbon dioxide and harmful gases released to the earth would become smaller. Furthermore by making more use of the rail transport it would be able to decrease the congestions resulted from the high usage of road transportation. The number of risks, accidents, and delays would also become smaller. Rail transport is...
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