Opportunities for Multimodal Transport Development to Promote a Sustainable Environment

Abstract

The rapidly growing global production and trade increase the demand for transport and logistics, leading to the establishment of increasingly more new companies providing these services. This also results in a much larger number of vehicles, which is not always a positive thing. Excessive vehicle traffic leads to an increase in environmental pollution, noise and traffic accidents, which have a highly negative impact on society and, more specifically, on human health. The negative impact on the environment has been increasing, and therefore representatives of national politics, the transport and logistics sectors should be alarmed and take action to reduce the environmental pollution. The development of the transport system should be carefully planned and geared towards achieving green and sustainable transport. In order to create a sustainable freight transport network, certain alternatives that could help to stop or at least reduce the process of environmental pollution should be pursued. One of such alternatives is the use of multimodal transport, which involves several different modes of transport for transporting one freight. This both distributes and reduces the burden on the currently dominant road transport mode, which contributes significantly to environmental pollution and is not sufficiently sustainable.