The purpose of the project Freight transport in society (GODIS) is to formulate a basis for a research and development (R&D) program at VTI. The report is based on six areas: (1) Estimation of marginal external costs and design of policy measures. (2) Transport demand models. (3) Socio-economic calculations. (4) Competition and financing. (5) Local and regional transport. (6) Consequence analysis. The assessment of the future need for R&D is based on today's problems, trends, R&D programs, interviews and own assessments. We choose a subjective approach that is mainly based on the authors' experience in transport analyses and investigations. It is remarkable that knowledge about volume and structure of freight transport and the possibilities to influence transport are limited despite of the importance of transport as part of the economy and that it causes large problems for society. Politics are to a high degree made at an European level. One consequence is that it is becoming more important to adapt to the directives of the European Union (EU) than to develop national policies. Also within R&D, it is more important to relate to European recommendations. There is also a need to develop cross-border tools for analysis. We derive the following conclusions for the issues above: (1) The design of infrastructure fees, their interplay with other policy measures and impacts inside and outside the transport sector have to be studied further. (2) Long term relations between freight transport and the rest of the economy (incl. needs for regional disaggregations and dynamic models). (3) Principles for cross-border and intermodal freight transport, calculation values and impact relationships require development. (4) The question to what extent competition between transport solutions and operators is effective has to be studied further. (5) General tools have to be adopted and specific measures developed at the local and regional level. (6) The access to data is a precondition for R&D and other analyses and investigations in the sector.