3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
LuxTram (source: site luxtram.lu)
The financial cost of new infrastructure is often highlighted as a strong barrier, yet the cost of
inaction and negative externalities is often forgotten. Urban sprawl is extremely expensive
because of necessary maintenance to roads and other infrastructure. The cost of traffic
congestion is estimated to be 1 to 3% of a country’s GDP. Lastly, the pollution impact on health
as well as the impact of a widespread lack of physical activity are difficult to estimate in
financial terms (see local and global impacts mentioned here above), but are too often
neglected in the overall analysis.
Clusters fostering innovation
Luxembourg benefits from active national public research with strong ICT know-how and the
best, most secure IT infrastructure (with excellent network coverage) in the world. This could
lead to a significant potential in the deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). Studies
show that there is a high economic development potential for Luxembourg in this field and that
while some companies are already active in the field, many more have the potential to enter
that market. The University of Luxembourg and the public research center, LIST, do research on
mobility solutions and related fields and have strong know-how in ICT.
The recent creation of dedicated clusters (automotive, logistics and ICT) also contributes to the
dynamic development of some specific industries in these fields in Luxembourg.The Cluster for
Logistics has united all institutional players and private enterprises in different competencies.
Their shared goal is to strengthen Luxembourg’s position as a major European logistics hub,
especially for high value added services. 85
85 Clusters for Logistics Luxembourg asbl (2015) Luxembourg your multimodal gateway to Europe
73