© Association for European Transport and contributors 2010

Transport systems in the European Union are complex. It is increasingly evident, however, that standard policy measures designed to manage these systems are unable to recognise and respond in kind to this complexity and that this has profound implications for the effectiveness and efficiency of policy interventions. Unless improvements are made to the manner in which contemporary transport systems are managed and governed, transport policy will be unable to ensure that the daily mobility of people, information and materials within the EU can proceed in a desirable direction, without jeopardising broader social, economic and environmental objectives. A major barrier to the realisation of effective and efficient policy interventions is the continued presence of isolated decision-making on the part of key policy actors. Indeed, such isolated thinking can result in situations where several independently-formulated and implemented policy measures are simultaneously enacted within the same location, potentially resulting in contradictory relationships between measures, limited policy effectiveness and wasted resources. Recognising the need to prevent unintended effects from policy interventions and to exploit the potential benefits of synergeti