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Purpose – This chapter reviews the provision for freight transport in Shanghai, and makes recommendations for the development of road freight including the aspects of optimizing the port transportation system, strengthening the planning and construction of freight terminals, promoting the formation of a city distribution system, adjusting downtown traffic policies, and promoting the provision of road freight information systems.

Methodology – Based on primary data and observation, this chapter describes the status of road freight in Shanghai and details existing problems. Based on experience elsewhere it then proposes changes in policy.

Findings – This chapter proposes some recommendations as follows: optimizing the collection and distribution system of the Shanghai port, planning, and construction of road freight terminals, adjusting the freight traffic policy in the central area and improving the performance of freight firms.

Implications – These recommendations, based on good practice elsewhere, should both enhance the efficiency of road freight in Shanghai and reduce its environmental impacts.

Value of chapter – The study will help the sound and orderly development of Shanghai's road freight transportation, better satisfy the needs of the people, and promote the development of Shanghai economy.

This chapter examines the systems used to collect data on the long-distance movement of freight by road for modelling, market research and other purposes. It begins by listing the features of an ideal long-distance freight data set that would fully meet the needs of policy makers, business analysts, academic researchers and freight operators. It then reviews the existing data-collection systems in Europe, highlighting their shortcomings and how they might be overcome. The third section analyses the strengths and limitations of several alternative approaches to collecting and analysing road freight data, some of which are at an early stage of development.

The objectives of this paper are to estimate the annual Malmquist TFP(total factor productivity) index of Korea and China’s road freight transport with DEA(data envelope analysis) and to decompose the index into technical efficiency change and technology change. In the process of the estimation, we used labor, capital, and fuel as input factors and ton-km of road freight transport as output factor. The panel data of Korea and China’s road freight transport industry from 1985 to 2004 are used. The results of the analysis show several points. First, there was no significant improvement in China’s TFP growth before 1997, but there was continuous growth in TFP since 1997 because of constantly increasing domestic freight transport demand. Second, there was downward trend in Korea’s TFP, especially there was a large reduction of productivity in 1998 because of the huge reduction of road freight transport demand during the period of the economic crisis. Third, the technology improvements play a significant role in the TFP growth and the technical efficiency had negative effects on the TFP growth of Korea. However, the technology improvements as well as the technical efficiency had positive effects on the TFP growth of China’s road freight transport industry.

Purpose – The UK road freight sector is an example of an economically important sector that can be viewed from two different perspectives with regards to climate change: firstly, as a significant contributor to the problem in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, and secondly as a likely recipient of significant impacts (both positive and negative) of any resulting change in climate, especially any increase in extreme weather. It is this relatively neglected second perspective, freight as a vulnerable sector, which is explored.

Methodology/approach – The way in which the freight sector develops in the future will be explored both in terms of the future type of freight operations and potential changes in vehicle technology.

Findings – There is a need to understand how the overlying socio-economic scenario influences the development of the freight sector.

Originality/value – The examination of the impact of climate change on the freight sector is a particularly original aspect of this chapter.

The volume of road freight movement in the UK has more than doubled over the past 25 years and its present growth is considerably exceeding official forecasts made in 1984. An attempt is made to explain why this growth has occurred, taking account of the close relationship between tonne‐kilometres and economic growth and outlining several spatial processes likely to have contributed to freight traffic growth. The spatial concentration of economic activity is identified as the dominant influence. The growth process appears to have undergone a major change during the 1980s, with the increase in average length of haul easing and the earlier downward trend in freight tonnage being sharply reversed. The implications of these recent trends for future freight traffic growth are discussed and an assessment made of the likely impact of the Channel Tunnel and deregulation of international haulage on the volume of road freight movement in the 1990s.

Road freight carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are determined by a complex interaction between shippers and hauliers within the boundaries set by regulations and economic factors. It is necessary to gain understanding about the various driving forces and trends affecting these to promote low carbon future. The purpose of this paper is to find out what factors affect the long-term future development of road freight CO₂ emissions and whether the long-term emission targets will be achieved.

An international comparison of similar Delphi surveys is carried out in Finland, Norway, and Sweden.

The Delphi surveys indicate that the structural change of the economy, changes of consumer habits, concerns of energy and environment and changes in logistics practices and technology are the overarching trends shaping the future of the energy efficiency and CO₂ emissions of road freight transport. The expert forecasts for Finland and Sweden highlight that reaching the carbon emission target of 30 per cent reduction for the year 2030 is possible. However, the CO₂ emissions may also increase significantly even though the CO₂ intensity would decrease, as the Norwegian forecast shows.

This study combined quantitative and qualitative analysis. The results confirmed that similar factors are seen to affect the future in all three countries, but with some national differences in the likely effects of the factors. Future research using the same methodology would enable wider analysis of the global significance of these driving forces.

This contribution describes the urban freight structure in the Zurich area, the possibilites and the potential for rail and intermodal transport. It contains results from studies made for the authorities of the city and the canton of Zurich and also from European research projects. It also notes supporting measures and framework conditions to reach a modal shift from road to rail based transport.

Economic growth is defined as growth in the capacity to meet individual and collective consumption demands. Decline in economic growth for a longer period (i.e. recession) occurs as a part of the “The Limits of Growth” concept. During such an economic crisis, three policy concepts can be implemented: “austerity”; “business as usual”; and “fiscal stimulus”. The purpose of this paper is to examine the economic response to the 2008 recession, in the area of sustainable transport system development, in Europe.

The study assesses and identifies the need for investments in transport infrastructure, in particular rail, to remove barriers to developing a sustainable multimodal transport system. Towards this, by analysing secondary data collected from relevant online sources, the paper explores the prospects for sustainable rail freight transport development in Europe, during the recession period. For this, eight EU countries were selected, based on the length of railway lines in use: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

Investment in five transport infrastructures were examined – road, rail, IWT, maritime ports and airports – and the research finds that overall, the “austerity” policy was implemented for investment in rail infrastructure, whereas a modest “stimulus” policy can be observed for investment in road infrastructure. The average investment in IWT infrastructure had a “stimulus” policy, whereas the average investment in Maritime port and Airport infrastructure suggests a “business as usual” policy. Of the various approaches taken in the recent recession period, European rail transport appears to have fared least well.

To some extent, the research is limited by lack of some data (e.g. data unavailability on the UK airport infrastructure investment from year 2006).

The findings of the research will encourage policy makers in national government to invest in sustainable transport infrastructure.

The study suggests that there is a lack of uniform policy response to the recession, in terms of investment in transport infrastructure, and that there is a significant difference between the policy goals set by the EU – modal shift from road to rail and/ IWT to develop a sustainable transport system – and their practice. The author argues for an integrative, common and action-oriented approach to sustainable rail freight system development, by European countries, to develop effective, Europe-wide rail freight corridors, under schemes such as Horizon 2020 and Shift2Rail.