Marketing decisions and strategic planning of tourism provisions require improving the knowledge of factors affecting tourism demand, as well as making better forecasts of tourism flows in the short and long-term. In this respect, approaching how holidaymakers select their holiday destinations and investigating which factors determine their choices emerge as a key challenge. The aim of this paper is to analyze the role of High Speed Rail systems on destination choice, specifically on urban tourism destinations. To that end, a quantitative analysis is carried out through logistic regression models aimed at analyzing how different explanatory variables affect tourists' choice of a destination. A Revealed Preference survey was conducted in June 2013 in Madrid, where tourists were interviewed close to the most attractive tourist sites. Preliminary results show that the Spanish High Speed Rail system seems to have a significant effect on the tourists' choice to visit other cities close to Madrid, but the choice of Madrid as a tourist destination is not influenced by the presence of High Speed Rail. Indeed other factors play a significant role

Attempts to integrate sustainability in the decision-making process for transport infrastructure projects continue to gain momentum. A number of tools and methodological frameworks are available — such as rating systems, traditional decision-making techniques, checklists, and different evaluation frameworks and models. While these tools are highly valuable, some practical issues remain unsolved. There is also a need for more standardized tools to appraise the sustainability of transport projects. This paper is a presentation of a review on the current assessment tools of sustainability applied to transport infrastructure projects. The preliminary part of the paper is an explanatory and comparative analysis of the tools and methods in terms of their effectiveness to appraise sustainability. The analysis is a critical evaluation of the current state of the art to identify the limitations of existing approaches, point out new areas of research, and propose a sustainability appraisal agenda for the future.

Firm location patterns emerge as a consequence of multiple factors, including firm considerations, labor force availability, market opportunities, and transportation costs. Many of these factors are influenced by changes in accessibility wrought by new transportation infrastructure. In this paper we use spatial statistical techniques and a micro-level data base to evaluate the effects of Madrid?s metro line 12 (known as Metrosur) expansion on business location patterns. The case study is the municipality of Alcorcon, which is served by the new metro line since 2003. Specifically, we explore the location patterns by different industry sectors, to evaluate if the new metro line has encouraged the emergence of a ?Metrosur spatial economy?. Our results indicate that the pattern of economic activity location is related to urban accessibility and that agglomeration, through economies of scale, also plays an important role. The results presented in this paper provide evidence useful to inform efficient transportation, urban, and regional economic planning

Travel time savings, better quality of supplied services, greater comfort for users, and improved accessibility are the main factors of success for high-speed rail (HSR) links. In this paper, results are presented from a revealed and stated preference survey concerning HSR and air transport users in the Madrid–Barcelona, Spain, corridor. The data gathered from the stated preference survey were used to calibrate a modal choice model aimed at explaining competition between HSR and air transportation in the corridor. The major findings of the paper describe the demand response to different policy scenarios considering improvements in the level of transport services. From the model, prices and service frequency were found to be among the most important variables in competing with the other mode. In addition, it was found that check-in and security controls at the airport are a crucial variable for users in making their modal choices. Other policies, such as the improvement of parking facilities at train stations, play a secondary role.

Economic growth has traditionally been linked to road freight transport demand, leading to a steady rise in social and environmental impacts. Concern about this problem has caused the EU to promote a decoupling strategy aimed at boosting sustainable development in European countries by improving the efficiency of transport systems without curbing economic growth. Over the last few years empirical evidence in some countries such as the United Kingdom has shown an increase in GDP while the volume of road freight traffic has remained stable or even decreased. This paper compares recent decoupling trends by analyzing the evolution of road tonne-kms/GDP relationship in the United Kingdom and Spain from 1999 to 2007. This comparison seeks to identify the main differences and key drivers of decoupling in both countries. We first provide an overview of the divergences between both economic structures and levels of road transport intensity. Then we conduct a decomposition analysis in order to identify the variables that explain the evolution of truck traffic per unit of GDP in each country. The results show that the increasing share of services in GDP has substantially contributed to decreasing road transport demand in both cases. Changes in road transport intensity due to improvements in logistic and supply chain management have been more successful in the UK than in Spain