The Fitness-for-Purpose Assessment of Strategic Transport Research in Support of European Transport Policy - From a Division between Research and Policy Making Towards an Integrated Innovation Activity?

The objective of a European Union (EU) sustainable transport policy is that the transport systems meet society’s economic, social and environmental needs. Effective transportation systems are essential to Europe’s prosperity because they have significant impacts on economic growth, social development and the environment. Mobility of goods and persons is an essential component of the competitiveness of European industry and services. Mobility is also an essential citizen right (Commission of the European Communities 2005a, 2006b). Extensive research has been conducted in the EU Framework Programs (FP) and also national levels to develop appropriate assessment tools for practitioners and policymakers to help them in the development of sustainable mobility and making it operational by supporting a better based and informed transport planning/policy process. (see European Commission 2006). It is seen that to be successful, the process should be based on (and monitored by) consistent and generally accepted information and indicators; forecasts should be developed by reliable and widely accepted models; and assessment methodologies should be able to combine the social, economic and environmental targets of sustainable development. Past and current research has developed such policy support and assessment tools for the National and European Transport Policies (e.g. Wolthuis 2006, The Extra project 2001a, 2001b), and they will be further refined in the future research activities, particularly in the research agenda of the EU FP7. Unfortunately, the actual use of these innovative proposals has been, thus far, rather limited. The focus in this paper is mainly on transport policy appraisal, i.e. ex ante assessment tools. Those tools are designed to assist in assessing possible impacts of future policies. The tools may consist of development of policy objectives, indicators, instruments and packages, impact assessment methods, development and use of models, etc. In other words, there exists a wide variety of tools, which use diverse approaches, are designed by different teams and for somewhat different purposes in the field of EU transport policy. Assessment tools are not unified and are mostly predetermined by a discussion between the Commission and the advisory teams, scientists or consultants. This diversity poses problems for civil servants and policy-makers because the impression arising from multiple results coming from the entire European scientific community is that there is no consensus on the use and acceptability of the different kind of transport policy advices.