Comparison of Road Freight Transport Trends in Europe: Results of Input-Output Structural Decomposition Analysis

Decoupling road freight transport from economic growth has been acknowledged by the European Union to be a key means to improving sustainability. It is therefore important to identify the drivers that explain road freight transport demand in order to determine the most appropriate policy measures to reduce road transport without curbing economic development. This research uses an Input–Output (IO) structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to explain road freight transport in terms of a set of key variables that have strongly influenced road freight demand in recent decades in European countries. This methodological approach allows us to quantify the contribution of certain factors in each country —such as economic growth, economic structure and the evolution of road freight transport intensity (including improvements in both supply and transport systems) — to road freight transportation. The empirical basis for this analysis is a dataset of nine European countries which have IO tables and road transport data available from 2000 to 2007, comprising data on domestic production, imports and exports as well as tonne-kms for 11 types of commodity classes. The results show that aggregate road transport demand has grown – driven mainly by economic activity– but this growth has been strongly curbed in some countries by changes in road freight transport intensity and moderately by the dematerialization of the economy. As a result, different levels of decoupling can be seen across Europe