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Inland waterway transport is an important economic activity in the Netherlands and in Europe. Especially in the hinterland transport of containers, inland shipping is expected to form the backbone of a multimodal transport system. To support and strengthen the inland waterway industry in the Netherlands, the Dutch Government conducted a stimulus program called Impuls Dynamic Traffic Management Waterways. As part of this stimulus program, research was carried out into the economic structure of the inland waterway transport industry, and the potential for cooperation in certain geographical areas in the hinterland. To support the development of new logistics concepts for inland waterway transport, we developed a simulator, in which market parties can develop new transport and logistics concepts, and investigate the impact of implementing these concepts. Several gaming sessions with industry representatives were conducted for six of the main geographical areas in the Dutch waterway system. From the sessions, we can conclude that further cooperation is possible in certain geographical areas, which can result in a concept that can prove to be beneficial for the partners in the transport network, as well as their customers. A second conclusion is that the combination of simulation and gaming in an interactive workshop setting proved to be a very effective way to stimulate discussions on innovations in the inland waterway transportation sector.

In this paper the strategic transport policy assessment instrument HIGH-TOOL is presented. The model has been developed for the European Commission, allowing policy-makers to identify the most advantageous transport policies and to strategically evaluate the impacts of transport policies on transport, environment and economy. The main innovation of this policy assessment tool lies in the integration of originally independently functioning modelsi.e. passenger and freight demand, demography, and vehicle stock models, as well as economic, environmental and safety assessment models. With its traffic zones at the regional level of NUTS-2 and its aggregated view on the transport system, the instrument has a relatively lean structure avoiding runtime problems, without losing the spatial dimension. What distinguishes HIGH-TOOL from all other European transport policy assessment instruments: the model is an open source tool, it is freely available and does not require any commercial software to be run. In combination with its modular structure the HIGH-TOOL model can relatively easily be adjusted to other modelling methodologies or data. It can also comparatively easily be made responsive to "new" policies which are not in the scope of the current model version. Thus the HIGH-TOOL model lays the foundation for further innovations in the assessment of transport policies and mobility concepts.

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