Soon after starting work on the development of a methodology for national trans portation planning in Venezuela, we realized the importance of an integrated management process for such an effort. We also realized the absence in the literature of specific guidelines on how to manage and conduct a transportation planning effort. The literature on the subject of national transportation planning is predominantly theoretical and technical in nature. To a large extent, the absence of literature on management and broad-based methodological approaches reflects the limited and ad hoc nature of the experience in national transportation planning. This book is an attempt to fill that gap. The main objective of the book is to show one way by which a methodology for national transportation planning can be integrated into a process management framework. It reports on the experience that the authors had in the Venezuelan case, as well as in earlier national planning efforts. The book is not intended as a theoretical discussion of planning. Instead, it adopts a particular theoretical stand and proceeds on that basis to develop a program for applying a specific methodology. The intention is to leave as much of the details and elaborations of that methodology to the user. This is motivated by two considerations. The first is a pragmatic attempt to limit the scope of the book."

This book represents the proceedings of a conference held at Kobe
University, that brought together some of the world's leading researchers in the field of
transportation planning and policy.
It contains a compendium of papers representing state-of-the-art research
on topics of competition and regulation and system structure in air and maritime
transportation. This book is a valuable resource for researchers and others who can use it as a starting point for advancing the state of knowledge in important topics of transportation systems management. It can also serve as a textbook for an advanced graduate course in transportation, economics, or public policy as applied to maritime transportation and air transportation. As such it is the first text of its kind.