Book Description

Transportation research has traditionally been dominated by engineering and logistics research approaches. This book integrates social, economic, and behavioral sciences into the transportation field. As its title indicates, emphasis is on socioeconomic changes, which increasingly govern the development of the transportation sector. The papers presented here originated at a conference on Social Change and Sustainable Transport held at the University of California at Berkeley in March 1999, under the auspices of the European Science Foundation and the National Science Foundation. The contributors, who represent a range of disciplines, including geography and regional science, economics, political science, sociology, and psychology, come from twelve different countries. Their subjects cover the consequences of environmentally sustainable transportation vs. the "business-as-usual" status quo, the new phenomenon of "edge cities," automobile dependence as a social problem, the influence of leisure or discretionary travel and of company cars, the problems of freight transport, the future of railroads in Europe, the imposition of electronic road tolls, potential transport benefits of e-commerce, and the electric car.