Oliver Schöller, Weert Canzler und Andreas Knie (Hg.): Handbuch Verkehrspolitik. Wiesbaden 2007. 963 S.
No political area is so linked with such high investments as transport policy. New roads, new railway routes and even airports are determining the face of towns and cities and regions. Results of socio-scientific mobility research show that transport, like hardly any other political field, is integrated into a federal network of all levels of expertise, interests and protection of acquired possession, which must be urgently and dramatically remodelled to be prepared for the tasks of the next decades. These circumstances are now being acknowledged and transport and mobility are being understood more clearly as a complex and even completely interest-driven phenomenon concerning the whole of society.
Who are the driving forces for transport in modern societies? What can transport policy in the light of selfsustaining economic and social developments possibly achieve? What role do the municipalities and the regions play in the federal system, in which most of the transport services are provided? How do non-intended effects of transport policy look? How do challenges such as climate change, ageing and diminishing society and the crisis of public households affect transport policy? These and a whole multitude of other issues are dealt with in the transport policy handbook as one initial presentation from socio-scientific viewpoints. In the current contributions, the publishers Dr. OLIVER SCHÖLLER, DR. WEERT CANZLER and Prof. Dr. ANDREAS KNIE, who are all employees for the project group mobility at the Berlin scientific centre for social research, offer an insight into the current status of debate on important topics concerning transport policy.
The contributions overall show the broad scope of research approaches on the topic of transport genesis and the disciplines concerned with this topic. At the same time, impact analyses clarify that successes in terms of a sustainable transport development can only gradually be achieved under the present framework conditions. The genesis of transport is thus clarified in its various facets as anything but scientific, even if important stages on its route have already been overcome. The contributions primarily concentrate on Germany, emanating from a series of different disciplines and are also just as versatile in their conclusions as the political field of transport policy itself.
Objective and concerns of the handbook are to reattribute the various and also completely contradictory phenomena of transport to their source, thus to social odiousness. Transport policy is and remains a significant part of social policy.
Autor: Thomas J. Mager