The rapid growth of urban population and the development of road infrastructures in Tunisian cities have brought about many environmental and economic problems, including the rise scored in energy consumption and the increase in the quantity of gas emissions arising from road transport Despite the critical nature of such problems, no policies have yet been adopted to improve energy efficiency in the transport sector. This paper aims to determine driving factors of energy consumption change for the road mode. It uses decomposition analysis to discuss the effects of economic, demographic and urban factors on the evolution of transport energy consumption. The main result highlighted in the present work is that vehicle fuel intensity, vehicle intensity, GDP per capita, urbanized kilometers and national road network are found to be the main drivers of energy consumption change in the road transport sector during 1990-2006 period. Consequently, several strategies can be elaborated to reduce road transport energy. Economic, fiscal and regulatory instruments can be applied in order to make road transport more sustainable. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.