Decision Support Tools - Thematic Research Summary - Transport ...

Executive summaryThis Thematic Research Summary on decision support tools aims to provide the readerwith a synthesis of results of completed European research projects related to this theme.It consists of two main parts. The first part includes a brief overview of the scope of thetheme and summarises the relevant main policy developments at EU level. The secondpart contains a synthesis of the main findings and policy implications from researchprojects and identifies the implications for further research. The research projects for whichthe synthesis is provided are European EU-funded projects that are completed and withresults publicly available. The EU projects have been funded by the Fifth and the SixthFramework Programmes. Also a few national projects are reported on. Projects that werereviewed in the related report produced within the predecessor project EXTR@Web areonly briefly summarised in the background section for each sub-theme.Decision support tools are concerned with methodologies and information tools fortransport policy making. The tools addressed by this TRS are those targeted to publicdecision makers concerned with transport policies and projects at all geographical scales(urban, local, regional, national, supranational), such as traffic studies on equilibriumconditions between infrastructure and service supply and demand, impact studies andevaluation studies of transport policies and projects, monitoring and benchmarking oftransport systems.In recent years, policy developments at EU level have stressed on the development of aEuropean Transport Data System for evaluating the performance of the EU’s transportmarkets and systems, in particular on the development of a European Transport policyInformation System (ETIS) to support policy makers at European level to analyseEuropean transport-related strategic issues with a view of deploying the EU CommonTransport Policy. Other priority actions identified by the Commission have been thedevelopment of the European Local Transport Information System (ELTIS), and theapplication of benchmarking to transport systems. Furthermore, in view of the release ofthe new White Paper on transport policy, The Commission has highlighted the importanceof harmonised appraisal methods (at EU level) for assessing the socio-economic benefitsderiving from investments in transport infrastructure and public transport services, as wellas the importance of adopting common methodologies in the appraisal of infrastructureprojects across modes and countries.Thematic Research Summary: “Decision Support Tools” Page: 5 of 74Transport Research Knowledge Centre