The role of transport services in enhancing economic development

Transport services play a significant role in enhancing growth and competitiveness of firms and economic systems. First of all, they play this role when they meet the increasing demand for mobility either of people and of goods, in a more and more globalized and integrated world. Their contribution is similar to other services, in terms of increasing aggregate productivity, intensifying intersectoral interdependence, developing process and organisational innovation. But the specific role in promoting economic growth is played by transport services through their networking nature; their capacity of increasing potential accessibility of territories that change the opportunities of firms and productive systems to exchange their goods, to locate their activities, to organize their productive processes in an increasingly wider space. Competition among different modes of transport - that play the same service function to people and goods - and vertical integration between infrastructure and transport services are the sources of the grea test difficulties in formulating effective transport policies, that would deserve to transport services forms of regulation more adequate to their nature of networking public utilities.