TRAMA - Economic impacts of transit traffic: computer model TRAMA
Overview
Background & policy context:
Transit traffic has a very important role in the Finnish economy. Mainly the goods are transported between Russia and Western Europe via Finland. The TRAMA model was developed in order to estimate the economic importance of the transit traffic in Finland. Transit traffic is defined in the model as consisting of the transit traffic, storage, handling, value adding etc. of goods, whose place of departure and final destination lies outside Finland’s borders.
Objectives:
The purpose of the TRAMA project was to produce a strategic tool, easy to update and easy to use, for the evaluation, monitoring and analysis of the economic impact of transit goods transport. The model produces an estimate of the annual overall economic impact of goods transport that passes through Finland. It also allows comparison of the economic impact of different transport routes and transport chains.
Methodology:
Two computer models were developed during the project. Model 1 computes the annual overall economic impacts of transit traffic in Finland (base year 2005). The model is updated every year with the newest traffic and structural data. Model 2 is used in the comparison of the economic impacts of different transportation routes and chains.
The transit traffic’s economic activity is defined with respect to the entire transport chain; sea transport, port functions, stevedoring, forwarding, storage, road and rail transport vale-added logistics etc. Factors illustrating the economic effects are sales income, value added, paid salaries, employment and foreign currency income.
The data on sales proceeds in the model was collected by surveys and telephone interviews. Other data used in the model was collected from statistics, previous studies, guidelines for evalution of route projects, and from other literature.
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