Suchergebnisse

This article reviews innovation of the European transport industries. It combines a quantitative analysis of the R&D investment of manufacturers of transport equipment, transport service providers and the constructors of transport infrastructure for the years 2008 and 2011 with a qualitative assessment of their incentives to innovate. The latter takes into account sector-specific innovation systems, their distinct market environments and the products and services produced. The findings show that, although the transport sector as a whole is the largest industrial R&D investor in the EU, there are important differences in the level of innovation activities carried out by the highly heterogeneous sub-sectors. These differences seem to be of systemic nature: they are found consistently in the quantitative analysis and the theoretical considerations. The result is highly policy-relevant as it indicates that policies targeting innovation in transport need to take into account the specific innovation capacities of the various sub-sectors.

Network effects and spatial spillovers are intrinsic impacts of transport infrastructure. Network effects imply that an improvement in a particular link in a network generates effects in many other elements of that network, while spillover effects can be defined as those impacts occurring beyond the regions where the actual transport investment is made. These two related effects entail a redistribution of impacts among regions, and their omission from road planning is argued to cause the systematic underestimation of the profitability of transport projects and therefore the public financing they require. However, traditional transport appraisal methodologies fail to consider network and spillover effects. In this study we focus on the spillover impacts of two highway sections planned in the city region of Eindhoven, located in the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant, a region with traffic congestion problems. The new road infrastructure will be financed mainly by national government, the province and the urban region of Eindhoven ('Stadsregio Eindhoven'), which consists of 21 municipalities. We measure the benefits of the additional links in terms of travel time savings and the accompanying monetary gains. The results show that important spillovers occur in those municipalities close to the new links. The province of Noord-Brabant will benefit the most. We also found important spillovers in the province of Limburg. This latter province will benefit from reduced travel times without contributing financially to the establishment of the analysed new road links.