PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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The automobile lobby, of course, takes the pro-car efficiency and modernization
rhetoric to its most extreme. Diekmann’s book is a perfect example of the way in which
this lobby appropriates the language of supposed scientific (read: market) rationality in
order to argue for subsidy cuts in the rail sector and further deregulation of services. His
concluding argument oscillates between economic rationality and ordinary polemic
(pp.109-114):
The primary objective of a rational transport policy is the optimal use of scarce
resources and the protection and furthering of important economic and social goals.
This objective requires reliance on market forces. It rules out subsidies.
Environmental sustainability, which is one of the social goals, has to be pursued
within this framework. … Instead of simply “milking” the road sector … increased reinvestment
in improving and updating transport systems is required. … Maximising
tax income from road transport is a permanent temptation for hard-pressed exchequers
but the opposite of a rational long-term investment approach. [Among other things]
governments should … press ahead the restructuring of railways in order to eliminate
the huge subsidies they require, which have been the greatest stumbling block in
making Europe’s transport system more efficient in the past.
Together, Gerondeau and Diekmann exemplify a vision of modernization that
does not really deserve the name “ecological.” For them, the environment is largely an
obstacle to achieving modernization, growth and prosperity. Sustainability becomes a
“social issue” (read: additional cost factor) and rail transport simply remains an
“inefficient” mode. 15
To be fair, there is of course a much more moderate strand of modernizationists
who also tend to be economists rather than engineers. These scholars are less obsessed
15 To some readers, it may seem unfair to base this sub-typification on highlights from quotes by only two
select authors. However, Christian Gerondeau, a graduate of France’s prestigious Ecole Polytechnique,
could hardly be regarded as “just any” independent, marginal, outside evaluator of European transport
developments. During his distinguished 30-year civil service career at the highest levels of French public
administration, Gerondeau played a significant role in shaping his country’s transport policies and plans,
being personally responsible for several reform initiatives. Achim Diekmann is an economics professor at
the university of Cologne. More importantly, Diekmann has been the director of the German Association
of the Automobile Industry (Verband der Automobilindustrie e.V. - VDA) since 1968. He also held the
position of chairman of the Liason Committee of the European Automobile Industry.