The Rise and Fall of Infrastructures: Dynamics of Evolution and Technological Change in Transport

The book gives a quantitative and long-term (200 years) history of the evolution of individual transport infrastructures and a synthesis of the resulting structural changes in the transport sector. The analysis covers a number of countries (USA, Europe and the USSR). Comparability at the international level and of the development of individual transport systems (canals, railways, roads and automobiles, air transport) is achieved by applying a consistent, quantitative analysis framework derived from diffusion theory. The approach is new in its integrative and holistic picture and unique in the quantitative data base assembled. Benefits to readers in academia include an overview of diffusion research and methodology, and of the quantitative history of transport infrastructures. For readers from applied transport policy and planning, the stable patterns identified in the individual life cycles of infrastructures and of the structural changes in the transport system give new insights about future trends and their resulting consequences on transport and energy planning.