Please scroll down for article-it is on subsequent pages With 12,500 members from nearly 90 countries, INFORMS is the largest international association of operations research (O.R.) and analytics professionals and students. INFORMS provides unique networking and learning opportunities for individual professionals, and organizations of all types and sizes, to better understand and use O.R. and analytics tools and methods to transform strategic visions and achieve better outcomes. For more information on INFORMS, its publications, membership, or meetings visit http://www.informs.org
This research provides an understanding of the key drivers of freight transport demand, how they affect demand, and how they can be influenced in order to achieve policy goals. The research consisted of a literature study and data analysis. Freight transport demand was studied at the decisionmaking level, since the amount and composition of freight transport demand is determined by a set of choices (e.g. shipment size and frequency, mode, time-ofday, route) made by a variety of decisionmakers. The key drivers of freight transport demand are Gross Domestic Product (GDP), consumer demand, economic structure, the logistics system, and the characteristics of the available modes of transport. Some of the drivers (e.g. GDP) are not reasonable targets for transport policies. However, many of the drivers can be influenced by policy in order to shape demand in more sustainable directions. These policies include changes in prices, regulations, infrastructure, traffic management, information provision, and subsidies, all of which affect one or more of the drivers or directly affect demand. The paper identifies the key drivers, and how each affects the various choices and the overall demand. It then discusses the possibilities and limitations of policy measures. 1 The authors wish to thank Maarten van de Voort of RAND Europe for his useful input to this paper.
The Amelisweerd case, a highly debated highway network expansion project from the late 1970s, has been widely portrayed as a symbolic mismatch between government and entrenched stakeholder opposition. The aim of this article is to learn from the case by unraveling the policy process using a multiactor policy analysis model. The result is that the policy process scores poorly on all the three applied criteria, and this has had a discernible negative effect on the level of stakeholder support for the policy proposals. Since then, major changes have taken place in the planning processes of infrastructural projects in the Netherlands. However, the potential for learning from Amelisweerd is much wider, as since the 1960s public projects are increasingly subject to public scrutiny and comment. Careful analysis from iconic cases like Amelisweerd can help current infrastructural policymakers and planning project managers as they develop fresh policies and projects.
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