World trends

摘要

For the transport sector, the prospect of a sharp upsurge in mobility in the coming years with the attendant increasingly disturbing effects on pollution represents an enormous social challenge. The political decision-makers are more and more sensitive to the external costs of transport. Studies currently in hand are not so much intended to demonstrate the railways' general superiority - which they share with the waterways where freight is concerned - in this regard, as to build up data bases and improve the methods used to calculate the costs of effects such as noise, accidents, pollution, climatic change, etc., for subsequent use in designing charging systems.