transport management :: essays research papers

Transport management is right away far more forward-looking than it was a decade ago.Transport activities generate a wide get of economic benefits. Between 2% and 4% of total OECD employment, for example, is derived from transport services, and an estimated 4-9% of gross domestic product in the OECD area is attributable to spending by the users of transport (including expending on infrastructure). More than 10% of total household expenditure now goes to purchase transport services (OECD Publications/ECMT). The balance of international payments is likewise strongly influenced by trade in transport equipment.Enormous changes have taken place in the transport sector in recent years. The approximately marked is its unprecedented growth. Both stock variables (fleet size, kilometres of highway and rail infrastructure, and so on) and flow variables (number of trips taken, volume of goods transported, and the like) have expanded rapidly. The worlds automobile fleet, for example, d oubled amongst 1970 and 1990, to stand today at approximately 500 million vehicles. These numbers pool are expected to double over the next 20-40 years, although at a slower rate in OECD countries than in the past. Substantial structural, changes have also taken place. For one thing, there has been a major huckster in where transport growth is occurring. In 1950, 75% of all automobiles were located in the United States. Since then, the number outside the United States has grown by about 8% per year (Mackenzie Walsh 1990) with even more remarkable increases in around locations. In Athens, for example, car ownership burgeoned from 35,000 in 1964 to 650,000 in 1984, and is expected to be about 900,000 by this year (Glaoutzi Damianidias 1990). Most future growth in global vehicle stocks is projected to occur in the developing world, as the industrialized countries become increasingly saturated with vehicles, as the developing countries bear up under urbanization and industrializati on processes of their own, and as people there begin to greet their longstanding aspirations for more mobility. There has also been a significant shift in the shares of different modes of transport. In the past twenty years, the volume of road freight traffic has doubled, while rail and waterway volumes have remained stable. In view of the rapidity of these changes, it is not surprising that transport problems are generating tidy political debate in most countries. The traditional approach apply to be to step up the supply of services increasingly, calls are beingness heard for policies that curtail demand. Whichever approach is preferred, much of the discussion centres on the so-called social costs of transport.