How to translate economy into freight transportation?

Kurzfassung

Economic activities imply freight transportation. However, the major question is: how much freight transportation is generated by which activities? In some analysis, the relationship between GDP and mileage or transport intensity is evaluated. There are different views, though, on whether such a coupling of these values is justified and needed or not. In this paper, the relationship between the amount of transported goods and economic activities by industries is investigated. Using historical EUROSTAT supply-use tables for Germany, we developed an economic indicator with which the interdependency between 59 industries (NACE classified), 59 products (CPA classified) and the amount of 24 types of transported goods (NST/R classified) can be shown. In the results, we can observe a strong interdependency between the majority of the transported goods and the developed economic indicator. This enables us to explain over 75% of the amount of the transported goods by economic activity. Therefore we can state that the developed indicator is suited to translate economic activity into freight transportation. On the one hand, the findings contribute to the coupling/decoupling discussion. On the other hand, the outcome and the developed economic indicator are highly relevant for the freight modelling community because the proper translation of economic activity into freight transportation is still a challenge.