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Rail intermodal services are an alternative to all-road services if the average transport time offered by these services is at least comparable. One of the determinants of transport time is how well actors in the transport chain cooperate. In this paper it is shown that substantial improvements in rail transport time are possible if these actors improve their cooperation substantially. This goes along with relatively moderate investments (a few million Euros per case). Such investments may then be regarded as a cost-effective alternative for (multi-billion) investments in rail infrastructure. This is particularly relevant in an era where budgets for rail infrastructure are either limited or create an additional burden for already debt-ridden countries.

Land is regarded as an important location factor by business firms. Firms change location due to internal and external factors and these changes should be accommodated by spatial reservations, subsequent land development and finally building of offices, plants or transhipment sheds. Business use of land competes with other uses of land, such as housing, leisure or nature. Spatial planning tries to balance these demands. Its success depends on finding criteria to justify a certain balance between economic and ecological interests or between different economic interests. Land-use should be included into a discussion about environmental sustainability. Spatial optimization would come at the agenda of firms and governments more often than is the case now. Yet, there is the issue of economic dynamics, which could be reduced if not all demands for new land are accommodated, at least according to business. This paper introduces a research program into the linkages between regional-economic-and spatial planning. It discusses the main ideas of this research program.

Current trends in transport indicate that the system is moving away from a sustainable development (e.g., due to rising CO 2-emissions) and that major changes in technology, public policy as well as in the behaviour of individuals are necessary to make the transport system more compatible with environmental sustainability. This provokes the need for assessing a set of future images for transport in relation to the environment. In this paper reference and expert scenarios, which can act as a judgement framework for a sustainable transport system, are constructed on the basis of the recently developed spider model. Based on a set of distinct characteristics of a transport system, represented by eight axes in the spatial, institutional, economic and social-psychological field, an evaluation framework is constructed, which visualizes the driving forces that largely influence the future of the transport system. There are several directions in which these factors may develop, and each of them will separately or in combination lead to entirely different transport systems. In this way, many scenarios can be constructed by connecting points on the successive axes. Such scenarios may range from market-oriented to regulatory pictures; the first may lead to a transport system in which individual, the second in which collective modes of transport dominate. Next, expected and desired scenarios are constructed by means of opinions of Dutch transport experts, which have been investigated by means of a nation-wide survey. The expected scenario indicates that many current trends will continue, while the transport system is largely the same as the current one. The desired scenario on the other hand, gives a more collective system, in which also many new modes are operating. The conclusion is that there are many roads for achieving a sustainable transport system, but that whatever road will be chosen, this road will be hard to follow.