PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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carries 90% local traffic. Yet curing the congestive symptoms of an unhealthy transport
system through highway expansion at the local level not only under-appreciates the
regional and international dimensions of travel, but it also ignores preferable approaches
to fixing transport problems in general. Even the EU’s recent emphasis on congestion
pricing only provides a partial, limited response. The problem of over-reliance on
automobile and truck travel needs to be addressed from a larger, long-term perspective
that includes the integration of land-use planning, demand management and the provision
of clear modal alternatives for passenger travel and freight. The mantra of integrated,
inter-modal network planning has been repeated by EU transport experts for decades, and
almost all EU-funded research on transport and land-use planning treats it as a foregone
conclusion. Nevertheless, implementation of this supposed consensus has still been
lacking in practice, and by focusing on congestion rather than sustainability, the new EU
White Paper on Transport even retreats from earlier, more ambitious policy approaches.
So in the future, EU transport policy should not concentrate not so much on eliminating
“missing links” and “bottlenecks” as on eliminating the predominance of the “missing
link” and “bottleneck” rhetoric.
10.4.4 Making the “Who Benefits” Question More Transparent
Trade offs, particularly between local and international beneficiaries, need to be
more clearly assessed. Even for an oversimplified case where one divides beneficiaries
into only two main groups, namely international and local beneficiaries, there are still
always at least four different argumentative scenarios describing possible outcomes.
Using the M0 ring road as an example, table 10.1 illustrates the possibilities.