Untitled - Ministerstwo Rozwoju Regionalnego

image of people flying without vehicles, or cargo transported automatically by
pipes or cables seems too simplistic.
Technological conservatism most strongly affects spatial differentiation of
transport costs. A common fault with present-day transport systems is that the
technologies used ensure an acceptable unit cost level only when a high level of
operational activity is reached (owing to high flow of cargo or to large numbers
of vehicles in operation). These systems are unproductive in low-demand areas
and lose the competition with individual forms of transport (the private car of
in-house transport). This conservatism could be overcome through innovation
making transport more customised 10 , with solutions ensuring its low cost and
creating a lasting order of such traffic in time and space.
Another fault of present-day transport systems is the technological oddities
that can be seen in the ways means of land transport are used. They consist in
the development of autonomous modal subsystems, which render interoperability
with other modal or national subsystems impossible. The original sin of
these oddities in land transport was the 19th-century split in the concept of vehicles
moving on iron wheels versus rubber-tyre vehicles. As a result, two commercially
hostile subsystems of transport emerged – rail transport and road
transport. Clumsy attempts are now made to re-integrate them within the concept
of intermodal transport, nevertheless based on the need to tranship the
loading unit. This disintegration of land transport would not have occurred if
the concept of universal vehicle, fitted with wheels running on both rails and a
flat, paved road had initially been followed. Additional technological pathology
is provided by the differences between national railway systems (rail gauge, signalling
systems, power supply systems), making international carriage difficult
and requiring difficult and costly implementation of interoperability. In contrast,
the autonomy of maritime transport and inland water transport is natural, because
the two kinds of waterway are incomparable – despite the fact that they
are used by vessels built on similar principles.
A challenge for researchers and transport policy makers is posed by the distorted
attitudes formed over the last decades to the way in which mobility
needs are satisfied. Millions of transport users do not seem to be impressed by
the burden of congested roads and streets, the death toll of road accidents comparable
with that of most bloody wars, or by transport-related degradation of
the environment. Transport does add to the range of civic liberties, but does this
mean that the freedom of movement should be exercised without any respect
for its impact? Can cars, unlike aeroplanes, be used anywhere, any time and in
any way? Innovations are needed to deal with the attitudinal distortions, by re-
10 Solutions like automated taxis could help here – see: Learning from a failed innovation process:
http://www.rstrail.nl/website_nieuw/pages/downloads/Course%20TIT/Learning%20from%20a%20failed%20innovation%20process%20Zuylen.ppt.
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