On the Move.... (Market for Mobility on the Roads)

This Hobart Paper addresses one of the great economic and social problems of our time: the suboptimal allocation of resources that has arisen from the incompatible financial, fiscal and regulatory regimes for the various modes of inland transport. In order to simplify the argument, it concentrates on the movement of people, whose demand for access to satisfactions gives rise to the derived demand for mobility with with the paper is concerned. The argument rests on the assumption that such satisfactions can only be assessed subjectively and that there is no planning technique which will ensure the provision of the required mobility at a quality and price that will clear the market. Having reviewed the various 'means to mobility', the paper concludes that measures to harmonise their investment, taxation and regulatory regimes so as to create an integrated market form the basis for the only 'national transport policy' that can have either meaning or success.