THE IMPACT OF FUEL PRICE INCREASES ON INTERMODAL TRANSPORT COMPARED TO THE INTERNALISATION OF EXTERNAL COSTS

摘要

This paper aims to determine whether an increase in fuel prices is sufficient enough to raise the market area of intermodal transport to the same degree that would be accomplished by stimulating intermodal transport through policy instruments, more specifically an internalisation of external costs. In a first step, several fuel price scenarios are therefore analysed in order to verify the impact of different fuel price evolutions on the market area of unimodal road transport compared to intermodal transport in a Belgian context. This analysis is performed using the LAMBIT-model (Location Analysis for Belgian Intermodal Terminals), which is a GIS-based model (Macharis and Pekin, 2008). With this model the different fuel price increases can be analysed and a visualisation of the impact on the market area of the different transport modes is enabled. In a second step, the LAMBIT model is used to analyse the effect of an internalisation of external costs in order to compare this policy measure with the effect of a fuel price increase. Results of this comparative analysis show that internalisation seems more effective than expected fuel price increases.