ABSTRACT
The geographical imbalances of demand and supply, visible in congestion and in surplus and abandoned capacity, arise from improperly considered costs and technical changes, changes in the geography and magnitude of demand and changes in the tastes and preferences of consumers and the body politic. Changes in transport operating and track costs, the balance between them and the advantage of different means of transport for different tasks may result from changes in the relative prices of inputs. A decline in the cost of sea transport relative to land carriage with container, roll-on-roll-off and barge-shedding ships has made much port capacity redundant, decentralising the points of land—sea egress and overland flows of traffic. In road planning, a switch in the 1960s from engineering concepts of efficiency to the economist’s maximisation of consumer surplus did much to change the accent of solutions.
