Assessing Scenarios on European Transport Policies by Means of Multicriteria Analysis

In general terms, the general Common Transport Policy (CTP) objectives of the European Union may be formulated in efficiency, regional development and environmental categories. Setting objective targets in the environmental field based on scientific evidence is not yet possible, so that it is still necessary to resort to policy documents. The same holds largely for economic efficiency and regional development issues, so that also here a pragmatic approach is required. The first part of the paper analyses relevant scientific frameworks, in this context followed by a specification of the targets. In the second part, future developments and policy packages are assessed by applying a multicriteria evaluation method based on the so-called regime analysis to the scores on these targets in six CTP-policy scenarios. Two external social and institutional frameworks - Cooperation and Polarization - and three policy directions (optimizing efficiency, regional development and environmental objectives, respectively) are investigated. It is concluded that European and societal cooperation and policies aiming at increasing efficiency and environmental objectives (especially by means of price measures) will result in satisfactory achievement of European transport policy targets.