Impact of fuel price variations on road freight transport and its CO_2 emissions

摘要

The diesel oil price elasticity of road freight traffic in France is estimated using : The results of French survey on Heavy Duty Vehicle use (TRM) that gives, per quarter, road freight traffic in tkm and vehicle.kilometer and a transport price index. And the CNR (Road National Committee) price of diesel oil. Simple ‘log log’ or ‘non log’ models are used, the demand being expressed in tkm or in vehicle km. For Own Account transport (OA), the explanatory variables are GDP and diesel price while for Hire and Reward (H&R), transport demand is expressed as a function of GDP and transport price; and transport price is a function of diesel price. Using log log models (constant elasticity over time), we found nearly the same elasticity estimates for H&R, own account and total demand in vehicle km. (-0.25, -0.26, -0.24) but rather high differences for TKM : when the diesel price increases, own account road freight demand, expressed in tkm decreases more than H&R. These elasticity estimates are comparable with what can be found in the literature.