Center for Economic Studies, Catholic University of Leuven
September 22, 2011, 12:15
<p>This article examines long-term trends and broad policy options and challenges related to the road transport sector and its congestion and environmental impacts. A brief review of long-term projections of demand for road transport suggests that problems related to road network congestion and greenhouse gas emissions are likely to become more pressing in the future than they are now. Next we review, from a macroscopic perspective, three policy measures aimed at addressing these problems: stimulating shifts in transport modes to decrease congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, boosting low carbon technology adoption to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars, and regulating land use to reduce road transport volumes. We find that although these policies can produce tangible results, they may also have unintended and costly consequences. </p> <p>Keywords: transport, environment, modal choice, climate change, car technology</p>
<p>Stef Proost is full professor at the Catholic University of Leuven. At the KULeuven he teaches transport, environmental and energy economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business and at the Engineering Faculty. He is director of a group of 10 researchers at the Center for Economic Studies that deals with environment, energy and transport topics. He is co-founder of the Energy Institute of the KULeuven and co-founder of the spin-off Transport Mobility Leuven (TML)). </p><p> He is specialised in using mathematical models to address public policy questions: optimal pricing and investment in transport, choice of policy instruments for environmental policy, energy pricing questions. He is co-author of the models TRENEN, TREMOVE, MOLINO, MARKAL and GEM-E3 that are used widely in the EU. He coordinated and participated in several European research consortia (TRENEN-II, FUNDING, GEM-E3, PRIMES, MARKAL, CAPRI, AUTO-OIL 2, UNITE, MC-ICAM, REVENUE, etc. ). He has served as expert for EU Administrations for Transport, Environment, Energy and Economic and Financial affairs, for ECMT-OECD, UIC, for the Federal and Regional governments of Belgium and for several other national governments as well as for private firms in the energy and transport sector. </p><p> Policy issues he studied over the last years include the deepening of the Scheldt, the Iron-Rhine, the Oosterweel bridge in Antwerp, the selection of TEN-T projects, the introduction of road pricing and the climate policy in the transport sector. </p>