Transports, Infrastructural Policies and Environmental Sustainability: the Role of Logistics

Two are the fundamental drivers that will shape future transport and infrastructural policies: environmental and financial resource scarcity and the urgency to deal with climate change at least in its pragmatic dimension to comply with emissions reduction targets. The paper proposes a different approach in investigating the relationship between transport and infrastructural policies and the necessity to solve longterm mobility inadequacy of the consumption and production systems. Currently, sustainability is mainly analysed in terms of competition and substitutability between transport modes and internalisation of negative effects in the price structure, thus regarded as the only way to provide incentives for more environmental-friendly modal choices. In the view of reducing environmental impact, in terms of land-uses and greenhouse-gas emissions, policies should instead aim at an increasing integration and combination among transport modes. A joint management of transport and land-use policies, concerning production, market and housing, is also desired in order to create basic economic conditions for a rationalisation and a consolidation of freight traffic flows without penalizing system performances. Economic incentives together with measures that restrict undesired behaviour may play a more effective role in such a general context.