The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the generation of added value within national economies. Generation of added value in the transport sector is an important factor in manufacturing products and providing services in the environment of the national economies. The globalisation of production has made the transport sector one of the main sectors enabling and accelerating the process of generating added value in all other sectors. The objective of the contribution is to determine which EU-28 countries made the most effective investments in research and development (R&D) in order to achieve the highest possible value added of the state within the transport sector in the years 2012-2017. For the purposes of the analysis, regression model and the method of artificial neural networks were used. Our research identified a high differentiation in terms of the volume of investments in R&D participating in the creation of added value in the transport sector. The results of the analysis identified the EU-28 member states which achieved the optimal share of investments made in R&D and generated added value in the monitored period. Since each country has its priorities related to its goals and geographical location, the determined optimum is only indicative value of investment for a specific country but not a recommended value for all other states.