Social Change and Sustainable Transport

This book presents papers from a conference on Social Change and Sustainable Transport that was held at the University of California at Berkeley in March 1999 under the auspices of the European Science Foundation and the National Science Foundation. The contributors are from a range of disciplines, including geography and regional science, economics, political science, sociology and psychology, and from twelve different countries. Subjects covered include the consequences of environmentally sustainable transportation vs. the business-as-usual status quo; the new phenomenon of edge cities, automobile dependence as a social problem, the influence of leisure or discretionary travel and of company cars; the problems of freight transport; the future of railroads in Europe; the imposition of electronic road tolls; potential transport benefits of e-commerce; and the electric car. Transportation research has traditionally been dominated by engineering and logistics research approaches. This book aims to integrate social, economic, and behavioural sciences into the transportation field.As its title indicates, emphasis is on socio-economic changes, which are increasingly what governs the development of the transportation sector.