Transportation Planning Techniques: Problems And Prospects

The paper reviews and assesses recent developments in transport planning techniques and makes suggestions on those aspects on which further research could most productively focus. Part I deals with various traffic forecasting methods, a field in which newer microeconomic decision models appear to provide promising results. Part II analyzes the use and limits of various planning techniques at the project, modal network and intermodal level, with particular emphasis on multiparametric simulation models; special attention is directed at the interdependence of investment, pricing, taxes/subsidies and access control. Part III is concerned with some ambitious but rather unsatisfactory attempts of predicting the locational impact of changes in the transport sector on other sectors of the economy; consistency analysis, dynamic planning and further basic line data collection, necessary to formulate models of higher predictive value, are suggested. Part IV discusses the implications of using transport policy as an instrument for explicitly influencing the desired regional pattern of economical and social activities, an area to which priority of further research should be given.