All official European Union website addresses are in the europa.eu domain.
See all EU institutions and bodiesDo something for our planet, print this page only if needed. Even a small action can make an enormous difference when millions of people do it!
Indicator Fact Sheet
Assessment made on 01 Aug 2005
While infrastructure length is only a proxy measure for capacity, the steady increase in the length of the road infrastructure between 1990 and 2002 (with motorways growing by 41 %), suggests that road capacity has expanded to the detriment of conventional rail and inland waterways that remained constant. The capacity may have increased even more since additional lanes are not counted in the statistics. The effect is bigger for the newly acceded countries than for the old EU countries. The length of motorways increased in these countries with 70 % -but from low levels-, while the length of other infrastructure remained stable.
Increasing infrastructure capacity is not always necessary. Optimization of the current traffic flows through road pricing ( e.g. road pricing or congestion charging1) is still limited throughout Europe. The application of these principles might be more beneficial to the society than the construction of new infrastructure when capacity problems arise.
For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/capacity-of-transport-infrastructure-networks-4 or scan the QR code.
PDF generated on 28 Mar 2024, 10:38 PM
Engineered by: EEA Web Team
Software updated on 26 September 2023 08:13 from version 23.8.18
Software version: EEA Plone KGS 23.9.14
Document Actions
Share with others