Impact of e-economy on traffic and traffic-related indicators in urban areas

As part of the POET project for the European Commission, the impacts of the e-Economy (including an increasing uptake of teleworking and teleshopping, and better use of intelligent transport systems) on transport in a number of selected urban areas in Europe were modelled. The modelling for the urban areas used existing transport models (passengers and freight) for Paris, Stockholm, Naples, Hamburg and The Randstad (The Netherlands). Secondly, it used several scenarios on the amount of ICT adoption for the year 2010. The third element in the modelling at the urban level is the use of so-called front-end models, estimated on new stated preference data. The outcomes in terms of vehicle kilometres were also used to calculate impacts of the e-Economy on energy use, emissions and traffic accidents. Also for some areas, we calculated impacts on congestion and accessibility. For some of the areas and scenarios we found considerable reductions in passenger kilometrage as a result of e-Economy developments, but freight transport increases.