IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/transr/v22y2002i2p134-145.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Limitations of transport policy

Author

Listed:
  • David Metz

Abstract

There is an implication in the notion of 'transport policy' that substantial improvements could be made to the transport system given sufficient ingenuity, investment and good will. This paper argues that such policy aspirations cannot cope with the desire for ever-increasing mobility, a deep and powerful force in modern society. In densely populated countries there is no possibility of meeting the demand for unconstrained movement through construction of additional transport infrastructure, since new and longer journeys would quickly fill the extra capacity until the congestion equilibrium is re-established. What limits mobility in practice is the time individuals have available for travel, time which is equitably distributed. Transport plans need to acknowledge this time constraint as fundamental, and accordingly be realistically modest about what is achievable. It is an illusion that the transport system could be substantially more efficient whilst remaining equitable.

Suggested Citation

  • David Metz, 2002. "Limitations of transport policy," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(2), pages 134-145, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:transr:v:22:y:2002:i:2:p:134-145
    DOI: 10.1080/01441640210121788
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01441640210121788
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01441640210121788?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David Metz, 2003. "Limitations of transport policy: A rejoinder," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(2), pages 243-246, January.
    2. Moshe Givoni, 2008. "A Comment on ‘The Myth of Travel Time Saving’," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(6), pages 685-688, November.
    3. David Banister & Michael Browne & Moshe Givoni, 2010. "Transport Reviews—The 30-super-th Anniversary of the Journal," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 1-10, January.
    4. Rajé, Fiona, 2003. "The impact of transport on social exclusion processes with specific emphasis on road user charging," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 321-338, October.
    5. Tim Schwanen, 2008. "Reflections on Travel Time Savings: Comments to David Metz," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(6), pages 709-713, November.
    6. Metz, David, 2005. "Journey quality as the focus of future transport policy," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 353-359, July.
    7. Anable, Jillian & Brand, Christian & Tran, Martino & Eyre, Nick, 2012. "Modelling transport energy demand: A socio-technical approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 125-138.
    8. Roger L. MacKett, 2002. "Comments on 'The limitations of transport policy'," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(3), pages 371-380, January.
    9. Liu, Qiyang & Lucas, Karen & Marsden, Greg & Liu, Yang, 2019. "Egalitarianism and public perception of social inequities: A case study of Beijing congestion charge," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 47-62.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:transr:v:22:y:2002:i:2:p:134-145. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TTRV20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.