ter the future land transport growth (as forecast here), a very substantial amount of land transport infrastructure investment will need to be diverted from road to rail infrastructure - in urban areas (for commuters) and in intercity freight and high-speed rail capacity. What makes this difficult to envision and implement is that it is very likely over and above the significant existing commitments in China and the EU-OECD for railway (and HSR) upgrading - and would still require a very substantial increase in road construction spending. There is no "sustainability" fiscal dividend involved. Public finance and transport authorities will be spending more on road infrastructure than currently - but there is a margin of land transport infrastructure investment that can be shifted from road to rail infrastructure. The biggest challenge will be in urban areas - where additional rail-track capacity is often very difficult and expensive and involves local amenity issues (e.g. NIMBY). The latter also exist for road infrastructure. Rapid urbanisation growth in the Big 5 and developing countries will require large investments in road and rail infrastructure. Roads are far more flexible (in terms of route choice) for most suburban commuters, and the urban rail network must be extensive (with relatively high urban housing/population density to support it). The (general) political unpalatability of road pricing has meant that decentralised local-based funding and decision-making models have not been capable of rapidly expanding urban rail networks. There is a need for higher-level government planning and funding support, whether or not private partnership is invited. Rising fuel prices have been shown to affect both road and rail use (this depends somewhat on the degree of rail electrification) - although passenger and freight traffic are remarkably fuel-price inelastic in the short term. Over the 2000-30 period, there are no breakthrough technologies that will fundamentally affect land transport demand. High-speed rail (and