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There is a heavy dependence on cars for people living in rural areas and small towns. The countryside has so far been left out of the transition to carbon-free transport, and public transport shares are low in rural areas. New information and communication technology (ICT) solutions and autonomous vehicles (AVs) have the potential to improve the conditions for public transport in rural areas, as they may increase efficiency and reduce costs. Still, these technological novelties are rarely tested in rural settings and policy focus and pilot tests have occurred almost exclusively in cities. The aim of this chapter is to explore the conditions and challenges for public transport in rural areas through ICT and AVs. The authors will discuss how policy focus needs to change to increase attention to rural areas and give suggestions on concrete policy measures that can be used. In the chapter, the authors draw empirically on results from two research projects in Sweden about the conditions for public transport in rural areas and ongoing tests with new ICT solutions.

Formal and informal interactions in the political elite and between the political elite and other actors have attracted a great deal of research (Petersson, 1996; Munk Christiansen, Möller, & Togeby, 2001; Moore, Sobieraj, Whitt, Mayorova, & Beaulieu, 2002). However, such research has mainly been concerned with the contacts of leading politicians once they have already become part of the elite, not the role that contacts might have played in their recruitment.

The purpose of this paper is to report on methods developed, within a three‐year Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) project at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, to achieve a higher degree of embedding of ESD in engineering programmes. The major emphasis is on methods used, results achieved and lessons learned from the work.

The basic idea that methods and activities were built on was that the only way to achieve long‐term changes is to increase the motivation and capacity of lecturers and program directors to perform the required changes.

Activities that were developed and tested focused on coaching discussions and on workshops for teachers, gathering teachers from one programme at a time. These activities aimed at starting learning processes in individuals. Special care was taken into keeping the feeling of responsibility and initiative in the faculty members within the programmes. A special “resource group” of experienced ESD teachers was available as support for programme directors and lecturers.

The methods reported on are further developments of a method that has been used in Delft University of Technology (the Individual Interaction Method) in the Netherlands. The experiences from Chalmers are discussed in such a way that they provide useful insights for others aiming at similar changes at university.

There are large differences in both speed and costs between the traffic modes road and air. Rail has not yet successfully offered services “faster than road but cheaper than air”, although there are technical, logistical and economical opportunities for competing with air for intra‐continental shipments and co‐operate for intercontinental ones. The article categorises segments of the European express freight market and analyses them in a rail perspective. Services between Sweden and Continental Europe and domestically in Sweden are focused. System modelling tools are also adapted to the application of express intermodal transport and prospective roles for rail in express transport are defined. The analysis shows that a transport chain with many actors and long distances does not necessarily entail longer transport times than a short‐distance with the same circumstances under a single management. The analysis also shows that many express transport systems are built in a modular way, implying that subsystems can be exchanged.