Transport, more than other sectors of the European Union economy, feels the pressure to protect the environment. This is reflected in the EU’s common transport policy, which, using parametric and non-parametric tools, aims at the designated goal of sustainable transport.
The process of balancing transport is accompanied by development paradigms that focus the actions of policymakers in specific directions. With the publication of the 2001 Transport White Paper, two development paradigms were adopted in the EU’s common transport policy: modal shift, known as shift, and the decoupling of economic growth from transport activity, known as decoupling. These were maintained in the latest 2011 Transport White Paper, but in a different dimension of action. Both paradigms are rooted in the idea of sustainable development, recognized as the most serious theoretical alternative to globalization. The lack of expected progress in realizing this idea has made contemporaries aware of the need for a holistic approach to solving economic, social, and environmental problems. This proves to be a difficult task due to the conflicts of goals occurring between the mentioned elements of the triad. The purpose of this article is to indicate, based on the achievements of the EU’s common transport policy to date, the justification for a change in the transport development paradigm and to present its shape.
Assumptions and achievements of the shift paradigm
The modal shift paradigm, referred to in the literature as the shift paradigm, expresses a new approach to patterns of production and consumption of services, taking into account the limitations inherent in the natural environment. Several premises for adopting this paradigm in the Community’s transport policy can be noted:
– the need to curb the dominance of road transport in meeting the transport needs of society and the economy due to its relatively high environmental harm and the emerging barriers to the development of the supply of services in this transport branch (congestion, land occupancy),
– the conviction that there is high substitutability of land and water transport branch services,
– the assumption of high complementarity of transport branches and modes,
– the shift paradigm essentially concerns two types of shifts:
– freight – from road transport to rail and water (maritime and inland shipping),
– passengers – from the use of private cars to public transport and non-motorized means of transport.
In the literature, one can encounter diverse opinions on the validity and feasibility of the adopted paradigm, which are mainly of an economic and sociological nature. It is pointed out that modal shifts are possible “when the spatial intensity of demand is sufficiently high,” and it is also noted that this paradigm infringes on the freedom of choice in how to satisfy transport needs. In transport economics theory, the scope of dominance of each transport branch is clearly defined, taking into account their technical and operational characteristics, accessibility (infrastructure and services), capacity for integration and innovation, etc. Improving these characteristics helps to expand the scope of substitution, but it is not unlimited.
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Source: Logistyka Magazine