age regional and district employment, as a way of converting a largely agricultural workforce to knowledge work and supporting service industries, while maintaining the national more rural settlement patterns. This would demand either highly developed local education systems, with many tertiary colleges, or the migration of knowledge workers away from urban centres. In the current developing world of China, Brazil and India the current phase is more urbanisation as this is far simpler with the scale of the populations involved being SO great. A possible solution might be some form of highly developed distance learning system, but without a large programme to drive it, such an initiative does not seem feasible. Transport: electronic mobility replaces physical Effects on road travel Currently roads in many OECD and developing countries are under pressure. Intra-European traffic was expected to grow by up to 140% over 1990-2015. 75 In the United States 4 billion vehicle hours of delays were predicted for 2005. Roads may already be inadequate in capacity or near to saturation, especially at commuting times with peaks due to passenger-car traffic for travelling to work. With use of telecommunications for telecommuting, traffic could be reduced, and INFRASTRUCTURE TO 2030: TELECOM, LAND TRANSPORT, WATER AND ELECTRICITY - ISBN 92-64-02398-4 © OECD 2006 2. TELECOMS INFRASTRUCTURE TO 2030 SO expenditure on new road capacity could be lowered. Effectively, sizing of roads for high peak traffic could be avoided to some extent. A further reduction due to telecommunications substitution for road traffic might come from take-up of widespread teleshopping. In total, the same levels of general mobility and service could be offered, but with lower road construction budgets, aimed more at maintenance and improvement of existing roads rather than expansion, assuming congestion reduces. This would also impact two associated costs to society in infrastructure services - the costs of road accidents and related economic losses, includin