In many cases this congestion reduction potential is based on the provision of new infrastructure and a resulting modal shift. Much better scores are obtained for environmental effects and service level improvements. Many new means of transport focus on service level improvements to attract passengers and freight, and comply with sustainable mobility policies to create public and financial support. This generally comes at the expense of high infrastructure needs and consequently higher costs. New transport concepts that offer attractive characteristics without exceptionally high costs are Automated Vehicle Guidance, the Bicycle Lift, the CargoLifter, the FastFerry, the RAD airship, the ParkShuttle and the Road Train.
Total impacts depend on the size of application in the transport market.
The market potential of new means of transport is assessed by a scenario-based future analysis. Other new means of transport require high economic growth to have substantial market potential, for example the Fast Ferry, the Fast Moving Walkway and the Transrapid. This shows that the opportunities for new means of transport are crucially embedded in socio-economic developments. Legal barriers involve laws and regulations that limit the construction or operation of new means of transport, or the integration with new or existing transport concepts in other nations. For the analysis of legal barriers and standardisation gaps, no systematic review of the individual new means of transport is performed, since there is a large variation in basic aims and stage of development.