Despite numerous opinions from a range of TSL market analysts regarding the successive tendency of economies to reduce their transport intensity, globalization processes and the relocation of production to regions with cheap labor continue to cause freight volumes in our country to grow year by year, particularly in transit, exports, and imports. Four transport corridors run through our country, in which we have observed a significant increase in freight transport over the last few years, especially in the road transport segment. In past decades, our country’s transport system in freight traffic was primarily focused on rail transport, which played a significant role.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, we have observed a significant increase in the importance of road transport. There are many reasons for the dynamic development of this branch of transport. Unfortunately, this is not without impact on our environment. A characteristic feature of the freight transport market in Poland is the relatively constant share of rail transport from 2000 to 2003, with a relatively small increase in transport performance in 2004, 2005, and 2006, and a rapidly growing share of road transport. In just the last 4 years, the share of road transport in transport performance in Poland has increased by almost one-third, essentially at the expense of other branches of transport. Currently, road transport occupies the undisputed first place when comparing all branches, both in terms of mass transported and transport performance. There is also a clearly visible tendency to extend routes carried out by trucks. This is caused by a decline in the competitiveness of rail transport even over long distances, where rail had an advantage until recently.
The development of road transport is favored by the progressive liberalization of the market and the facilitation of border traffic due to the expansion of the European Union’s borders. Comparing the changes taking place in the transport market of Western European countries, one can hope that new EU members will not make a mistake and, through appropriate transport policy, and above all the principle of equal treatment of all types of transport, will curb the unfavorable trends of reducing the market share of ecological forms of transport.
A serious influence on the shaping of the freight transport market has had and will continue to have the bearing of costs of access to transport infrastructure and the share of so-called external costs by individual transport branches. Road transport is very strongly privileged here, although its impact on the environment is the most negative; it bears almost no fees for this, and thus a very simple principle, which we demand to be followed in other areas of life every day, that “the perpetrator pays for the damage caused,” has been undermined. Unfortunately, state budgets (and thus entire societies) pay for the so-called external costs of road transport operation. The most worrying fact, however, is that it contributes to significant and irreversible changes in our environment. Such shaping of transport policy may be socially justified under certain conditions (development of motorization, new jobs, the impact of transport service prices on the prices of products and other services), but in the long term, it leads to a disturbance of the principles of balanced development of individual branches of transport. It should be clearly stated that the modern economy could not function properly without road transport – due to its features, such as mobility and flexibility. However, efforts should be made to limit its use where it can be replaced by ecological forms of transport.
