Future framework conditions for integrated transport systems: Understanding embedded transport system’s evolution

Abstract

Economic and social developments are constantly in flux. In the past 200 years, always whenever physical transport systems were limiting economic and social development, a totally new transport mode emerged that offered new functionalities in accordance to the socio-economic paradigm’s requirements. It offered huge efficiency improvements to its users. New transport systems always implied new socio-economic paradigms - they changed markets, socio-economic skills, behavior, rules, institutions, norms, etc. In consequence, new transport modes constituted the basis of so-called Kondratieff cycles. In order to provide orientation for transport and economic policy maker in regard to future developments in transport technology, this article analyzes the socio-economic paradigm nowadays from an evolutionary economic point of view with the Concept of Transport System’s evolution (CTSE). The analysis reveals that the currently active Kondratieff cycle (called “Digitization”) will result in new requirements on the transport system in the near future, namely on-demand, time-space instant and eco transportation. Based on this we discuss three possible future pathways for transportation in the next decades: Evolution, transition and revolution.