Understanding the complexities of Transport

In the development of the transport sector, it’s important that social, economic and environmental considerations are accounted for. Dr Susan Grant-Muller, Rico Merkert and Nikolaos Thomopoulos of the PEAT project explain why their research in the sector is relevant to global policy-makers.

Transport schemes almost invariably have an enormous social, economic and environmental impact, meaning a wide range of considerations need to be taken into account in their development and implementation. The rapidly evolving nature of the sector also means that it demands a flexible approach to training the transport experts of the future, according to Susan Grant-Muller, the co-ordinator of the PEAT (Policy, Economics and Appraisal in Transport) project. “The PEAT training site was established with funding from the EC’s Marie Curie Actions programme. Eight Marie Curie Fellows were recruited, all researchers in the early stages of their careers, from across Europe” says Grant-Muller. “A key objective was to build capacity – by adding to the pool of people who would go on to guide the development of transport systems in Europe.”

“The whole process for European students could take seven years, and possibly even more. By offering a multidisciplinary transport PhD at Leeds, the aim has been to increase Europe’s research capacity and help meet the demand for researchers with high quality skills in transport economics and policy.”

However, analysing the likely impact of transport schemes is not without difficulty, and thus the methodology used must aim to be both rigorous and comprehensive. “Some of the data that we work with in transport is not as pure or well defined as some of the data available in other fields – for example stock market data or finance, some of the areas that economists might traditionally enter into,” acknowledges Grant-Muller.

“The transport system is already very close to capacity, the point at which transport networks cannot absorb more demand. We are also increasingly aware of the impact that transport has on the environment, in particular the demands on energy resources. The green agenda has caused us all to think very carefully about transport, both how much we need to travel and the way in which we choose to travel,” she says.

Contact Dr Susan Grant-Muller, Associate Editor of the new European Transport Research Review Open Access Journal (ETRR), and Director of Research at ITS, at s.m.grant-muller@its.leeds.ac.uk

Published: Monday, 9th November 2009