SVI 1999/310 - Interactions between Transport and Economy
Overview
Background & policy context:
This project is part of the multi-yearly programme 1999/302 of the Commission 'Research in Road Transport'.
This commission belongs to the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (UVEK).
Objectives:
This research project aims to demonstrate the short and longer-term interactions between transport and economy.
The second objective is to develop a target and indicator system to measure the economic impact of transport projects. The target and indicator system is based on the concept of sustainability. The 'economy' refers not only to the impact on individual firms at the microeconomic level but also to the macroeconomic impact in terms of employment, income and growth.
At the end, the target and indicator system is put to the test using the A7 (motorway junction linking the A1 in Winterthur with the canton of Thurgau) as a case study.
Methodology:
Firstly, the interactions between transport and the economy are analysed. The starting point is a hypothetical change in the transport system. This change can produce several effects in the short and the medium/long run including the variety of possible adjustment and feedback effects.
The following two approaches are applied in current research to measure these effects:
the macroeconomic approach which estimates the influence of transport infrastructure on economic development (e.g. of GDP) using statistical, mainly econometric, procedures but without resorting to a comparison of costs and benefits;
the microeconomic approach which uncovers the individual economic effects of improved transport provision and are based on the effects on individual road users, firms and households (cost-benefit analysis) and which can be extrapolated for the entire economy.
Based on the analysis of these effects, a target and indicator system to uncover the economic effects of infrastructural or organisational change to the transport system was developed. This is guided by the concept of sustainability in which a development can be deemed sustainable if it is environmentally friendly, efficiently meets economic needs and is socially equitable (three-circle model).
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