External Costs Update 2005 - Total external costs of transport in Switzerland: comprehensive update study for 2005
Overview
Background & policy context:
Starting position and aim
Under the terms of Article 7 of the Swiss distance-related Heavy Vehicle Fee Act (Schwerverkehrsabgabegesetz) of 19 December 1997, the external costs and benefits of transport must be updated regularly. The used methods must reflect the latest research findings. In addition, in the autumn of 2006, the Federal Statistical Office and the Federal Office for Spatial Development produced for the first time an integrated transport account for road and rail transport for the year 2003. This calculation, which includes operating and infrastructure costs as well as external costs, must be updated for the reference year 2005. These are the two factors that have led to this update of the external costs of transport.
In 1998 INFRAS on behalf of ASTRA carried out a study on the costs of congestion in road transport (INFRAS 1998). The congestion costs were estimated between 750 million to 1.2 billion CHF per year. The main section is dispensed to time costs, the next relevant category, the accident cost, energy costs are one order of order of magnitude less than the time cost, and environmental costs are somewhat less important. This congestion costs correspond to an amount of 0.2 to 0.4% of GDP (gross domestic product). Compared to foreign data where values are mentioned up to 2 to 4 % of GDP, these values were significantly lower.
Objectives:
The aim of this study is to update the studies on external costs of transport commissioned by the Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE) from the year 2000 to the year 2005. The road and rail sections externalities are updated separately. The costs are split according to passenger and freight transport. Road transport is further divided into costs for different vehicle categories. Another focus of this project is on identifying bandwidths (or 95% confidence intervals) in order to take into account the uncertainties associated with individual assumptions within the calculations.
Methodology:
The method used to calculate the external costs of transport is based on the following approach:
- The calculation basis is the traffic volumes of road and rail transport in 2005.
- These figures are used to estimate the pollution situation. Depending on the cost area, basic data are required, such as emission functions, wind conditions, population density, and noise barriers, etc.
- In the next step, the resulting effect/damage is calculated. Depending on the cost area, this may include the number of additional people who fall sick or are injured or killed, or the number of homes exposed to noise. In order to identify these effects, pollution-effect relationships, survival probabilities and other basic data are used.
- Finally, the damage is quantified in terms of monetary units. To do this, specific cost rates per accident, injured person, illness and lost year of life, and lost rent are calculated, de-pending on the cost area, and applied to the calculated damage figures.
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