PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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with the expansion of road infrastructures than with the inefficiencies of all modes and
networks. Very few of them are as dismissive of rail’s future as the car-oriented
engineering and construction lobby. To these moderate modernizationists simple
efficiency improvements in the physical transport infrastructures are futile unless they are
complemented with other logistical, organizational and regulatory changes, especially
where multiple national territories are transversed. The persistence of major transport
bottlenecks at (former and still existing) national border crossings therefore emerges as
another major concern. For example, Ratti (1995:71) identifies three major problems
related to border crossings: 1) border barriers, in which real economic effects due to
‘shipment ruptures’ can be observed, 2) border filters, characterized by the persistence of
legal, fiscal and customs differences, and 3) border contact zones that are influenced by
the heritage of old infrastructural situations as well as persistent institutional and cultural
differences. These scholars also tend to focus on Trans-European Networks as providing
the “missing links” necessary for proper European integration, but see them as a less
exclusively physical problem. 16
The resulting studies clearly emphasize the importance
of national border crossings as a major impediment to efficient transport flows, and they
tend to favor high-speed rail and combined transport infrastructures over road as the most
appropriate modern transport solutions for Europe. The political weight this expert
perspective has within the EU is demonstrated by the fact that of the 14 selected highpriority
TEN transport projects, almost all involve high-speed rail or combined transport;
only three are road-only projects and one is an airport. These “moderate
modernizationists” would also never fail to mention the increasing importance of
telecommunications and other technological solutions, while also recognizing the grave
16 Chapter 6 presents a close examination of EU policy discourses on “bottlenecks” & “missing links”.