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The strong expansion of freight road transports throughout Europe is an important source of congestion and pollution, as well as a cause of many accidents. To be solved this problem will require the conjunction of many different remedies. One element of solution would be the promotion and the substitution of transportation modes with less negative effects. This paper is focused on this solution. It presents some results obtained from a detailed modeling of the Belgian multimodal freight transport network inserted within the overall trans-European network. It outlines the results of a simulation of the flows over the Belgian network in 1995 which allows to estimate some of the costs of several external effects of freight transports: the costs of pollution, congestion, accidents, noise and road damages. The paper provides also the simulated impacts on modal choice of a marginal external cost internalization, and an estimation of the corresponding external costs savings.