Developments in Transport Studies – serie

Soon after starting work on the development of a methodology for national trans­ portation planning in Venezuela, we realized the importance of an integrated management process for such an effort.

The 1977 BTE Report on Cost Recovery in Australian Transport 1974-75 provided estimates of the aggregate level of financial cos~ recovery in the various modes, by broad transport task.

The 1977 BTE Report on Cost Recovery in Australian Transport 1974-75 provided estimates of the aggregate level of financial cos~ recovery in the various modes, by broad transport task. It suggested that there were substantial differences between modes in the level of cost recovery. The 1979 Transport Pricing and Cost Recovery seminar concluded that economic efficiency objectives required more attention 1n transport pricing and investment decisions than had been apparent in the past. The principles for economically efficient pricing were spelt out, and several specific issues were identified, which are worth following up in this seminar. These include reconciliation of financial and econom1C efficiency objectives and the identification of appropriate revenue targets; specification of the changes 1n accounting and management information systems which would be required to implement more economically rational pricing; and identification of the principles for estimating compensation for public service obligations. Finally, a brief account 18 given of recent BTE work on cost recovery in general aviation, and in road and rail transport. BTE has suggested that econom1C efficiency considerations would require substantial modification to the present means of collecting revenue from general aviation, with more reliance placed on direct pricing measures like flight-specific alr navigation charges and airport movement charges. On road-rail competition, an order of magnitude comparison of road and rail cost recovery in the Adelaide-Victorian border corridor suggests that only the road mode approximately covers short-run avoidable costs and that both modes fail to cover long-run avoidable costs.

In the fast-growing East European economies, a parti­ cularly important role falls to the transport systems that are called upon to move an ever-rising volume of goods and a con­ stantly increasing number of passengers. Gaining new insights into the problems that face those transport systems, into their achievements, and into some still unanswered questions is therefore highly interesting and--in terms of world experience --essential. The transportation systems of Eastern Europe operate within a centrally planned environment, but they serve dif­ ferent types of economies, from highly advanced East Germany and Czechoslovakia to the still industrializing Romania and Bulgaria. They have to satisfy fairly diversified transport needs: they operate within systems that have adopted different scales of political and economic priorities and different methods and forms of achieving them politically--from the faithful Soviet shadow-state of East Germany to the indepen­ dence-seeking Romania and Yugoslavia and, economically, from the traditionally strict authoritarian form of Romania that seeks industrialization and state power to the New Economic Mechanism of Hungary and the decentralization of Yugoslavia. Also, unlike the Soviet Union, the East European transport sys­ tems cover relatively small territories whose external connec­ tions differ from one another in scope and in modes. In addi­ tion, the transport systems of Eastern Europe have been called upon to accomplish feats of steeply rising performance with x infrastructures and equipment supported by miserly allocations.