Transport, Environment, and Institutions: Why Good Science, Engineering, and Economics Fail?

Louis S. Thompson ()
Additional contact information
Louis S. Thompson: Thompson, Galenson and Associates, LLC

Chapter Chapter 18 in Transport Moving to Climate Intelligence, 2011, pp 291-303 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Transport is a derived demand: that is, the use of transport is determined by economic and social forces external to transport. Demand for transport is related to costs, including labor, investment and energy, and to service quality (frequency, speed, reliability). Energy use in transport (the prime determinant of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions) is often only a minor percentage of total costs, so market forces alone often do not act to minimize GHG emissions. In addition, transport has social impacts, including air pollution, energy security, noise, human safety and traffic congestion, inter alia, few of which are effectively controlled by market forces. Finally, major suppliers and consumers of transport services are often publicly owned, which can act to insulate them from the normal incentives for either efficient or socially responsible behavior. Governments have responded to the need for better linkage between transport networks and their social impacts with a mixture of changes of institutional structure, ownership, and regulation. This paper discusses examples in which institutional shortcomings in developing (and sometimes developed) countries have acted to weaken or even defeat the implementation of scientific or engineering advances and outlines some cases in which changes have worked, with emphasis on the need to reach the right balance of science, technology, economics and public policy. The paper concludes that global warming is neither understood nor accepted by a significant portion of the world’s population and that implementation of GHG control programs will be difficult and at best severely hindered because of institutional weaknesses. The paper urges an intensive by scientists to explain GHG issues in terms that ordinary citizens can accept and support.

Keywords: Modal Choice; Freight Transport; Gross National Income; Gasoline Price; World Price (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:trachp:978-1-4419-7643-7_18

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9781441976437

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4419-7643-7_18

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Transportation Research, Economics and Policy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().