Abstract
This case study examines the European Transport White Paper of 2011 as an example of a planning domain application. The European Union is an economic and political union of some 28 states in Europe. Some of the key premises of the European Union have been to open up markets to free trade within the region and to seek to harmonise technical standards, laws, and processes to facilitate the free movement of people and goods. It is interesting that sustainability is also emphasized as an overarching goal for all areas of European policy making. The European Union employs a wide range of assessment and monitoring mechanisms to track progress on the implementation and performance of policies in the transport area, which is seen as a keystone for the so-called Single European Market. These mechanisms clearly reflect tensions between the different goals and pose challenges for the interpretation of indicators on transportation trends. Also the sheer size and complexity of the Union raises challenges for the effective application of indicator based evidence. The chapter will place the indicator- and application rich example of the ex ante assessment of the European Transport Policy White Paper in the wider context European Union policy making.
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Notes
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By contrast, the lack of a national sustainable transportation policy in the USA means that states and regions are left to formulate their own approach, which could result in conflicting outcomes if coordination among agencies is poor (see the related discussion in Sect. 4.2.3 and the case study on how New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) has approached sustainable transportation in Chap. 10).
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Gudmundsson, H., Hall, R.P., Marsden, G., Zietsman, J. (2016). European Union Transport White Paper. In: Sustainable Transportation. Springer Texts in Business and Economics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46924-8_8
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