EUNET Project

Project Summary

EUNET
Socio-economic and Spatial Impacts of Transport

Client Commission of the European Communities, Directorate General for Transport

Duration 6/1996-6/1999

OBJECTIVE:
The main objective of the EUNET Project is to develop a comprehensive innovative methodology for the assessment of the impacts of transport initiatives (i.e. infrastructure and technology investments, regulatory and fiscal policies).

DESCRIPTION:
Recent years have seen many developments in assessment methods and models. What is needed is to draw these together into a tightly focused, operational, assessment tool oriented towards the particular needs of decision makers.

The approach will be sufficiently general and flexible to be applicable across modes, across countries and to large and small projects. It will include both the immediate direct transport benefits as well as measuring the longer term spatial, socio-economic and regional development effects. It will include both ex-post and ex-ante assessment procedures. The approach will also allow simple and transparent model structures with modest data requirements and limited development costs.

This will be accomplished by integrating the various elements of the approach through developing a user-friendly interactive computer prototype system that comprises three components:

(i) an information database that describes the transport and socio-economic characteristics of the study area

(ii) a modelling system that for a specific future scenario will simulate how transport initiatives influence the future evolution of the study area through time and through space

(iii) an assessment tool that assembles all of these impacts into a framework for multicriteria decision and cost-benefit analysis.

This system will use existing commercially available software for many areas where flexible and reliable tools have already been marketed. New software development will also be carried out, with a particular focus on the creation of user interfaces that streamline and simplify the practical application of the proposed approach to actual studies.

Innovative research studies will also be carried out within each components above to improve understanding of each system. Demonstration assessments for some transport initiatives in the TEN (selected in consultation with the Commission), will be carried through from beginning to end using the prototype system described above.