A Territorial Impact Assessment of Trans-European Transport Networks

Mcrit sl / INRETS (1994-1996) for EC/DG7

• Presentation
• Objective
• Methodology
• Modelisation
• Case-Studies
• Strategies

This document contains the Executive Summary of the Union´s Territorial Strategies Study Linked to Trans-European Transport Networks study (UTS).

The objective of the Guidelines for the Development of Trans-European Transport Networks TETN (COM(94), 106) aimed the integration of present modal-oriented national transport networks into a single Trans-European Network by year 2010. Already approved Trans-European Transport Networks include about 75.000 km of motorways and express-roads (around 30.000 km of them planned) and 72.000 km of railways (about 20.000 km of planned links, including 10.000 km of new High-Speed lines). At the same time, several major European airports, ports and freight terminals have (or have recently had) important projects to expand its capacity. Projects in the TETN represent an overall investment of some ECU 400.000 million for the next decades.

The UTS Study final goal was to advance the Union´s most appropriate Strategies to achieve the objective of TETN Development Guidelines and the paramount political goals related to them. The UTS study has been conceived as a policy-oriented approach, rather than as academic exercise only. It aims to present relevant territorial information to transport decision-makers, helping them to optimise the process of placing the TETN planned infrastructures on the territory and the potential spatial development impacts linked to TETN.

Recent reports made by DGVII and other EC General Directorates have been of great utility for the advancement of the UTS Study. Special mention deserve the Christophersen Group various reports (1994,1995), High Level Group on HST Network Report (1994), Motorway Working Group SPREAD report (1994), COST 317 (1995) Interim Report, Europe 2000+ Report (1995, DGXVI) and Towards Sustainability Report (1994, DGXI).

Under Mr. Jorge Patricio-Dias (DGVII-A3) direction, the UTS study was conducted during 1995 by the following institutions: Mcrit / MultiCriteria Consulting Ltd., (Barcelona) and INRETS-DEST (Département Economie et Sociologie des Transport) / Institut National de Recherche sur les Transports et leur Securité (Paris) Consultants in charge of the study thank all Member State representatives in the EC Transport Infrastructure Committee, European Investment Bank and EUROSTAT GISCO Team, for all information and suggestions they provided.

The Union Territorial Strategies Study (UTS) is a global Strategic Territorial Assessment of Trans-European Transport Networks (TENs).

The TENs Achievement of Territorial Goals

E.U. paramount territorial goals related to Trans-European Transport policies can be summarized in the improvement of the Competitiveness, Cohesion and Sustainability of the whole European Union´s territory. Therefore, the UTS study has been focused on exploring the following overall questions:

• Will TENs be efficient in solving trans-national bottlenecks to European overall competitiveness?

• Will TENs contribute to reduce the development gap between peripheral and central European areas, providing more cohesion to the European space?

• Will TENs improve European sustainability by inducing environmentally more friendly mobility patterns?

In the context of the TENs impacts study, these concepts have been defined as follows:

Multiple Scale Connections (Road)

Multiple Scale Connection (Rail)

Multimodal Connections (Air-Rail)

The Competitiveness, Cohesion and Sustainability new opportunities created by TETN, as well as TETN own financial and political feasibility, are very sensitive to the concrete territorial definition of transport projects. In the increasingly complex and networked European Transport System, extremely contradictory impacts can be expected depending on the way new projects will be connected to existing transportation infrastructures, and on the way they will be managed.

Three key overall questions have been identified that have a great importance on the TETN impacts:

On the other hand, the optimal definition and placement of large transport projects is constrained by territorial aspects. For instance, the high density of urbanization and their strong inertias, the new concerns related to the protection of natural areas or the mere existence of national boundaries and other administrative divisions within them. Large Transport Infrastructures, such as TETN planned links, are not abstract policies, but concrete and physical artifacts to be placed on the European territory.

Especially in the case of larger cities (above 2 million inhabitants), dead-end rail stations, confuse and uncompleted metropolitan by-passes, and suboptimum airport connections will remain as the most usual configurations after TETN. The functioning of TETN will be very sensitive to these aspects since transportation nodes located in large cities are the main national hubs and they are already becoming multimodal hubs at Trans-European scale.

The costs to overcome these local problems would be mostly allocated on transport national sectors, but the long-term benefits would be often allocated on other countries, cities and transportation modes (that would take advantage of the new interconnections or by-passes). This unequal territorial and modal distribution of costs and benefits often risk to block any improvement and reduce the potential global benefits related to the constitution of the Trans-European Transport Systems as an integrated network.

The UTS methodology has been designed according to these objectives:

• The UTS study must provide quantitative measures of TETN overall territorial impacts, in terms of Competitiveness, Cohesion and Sustainability, making explicit their sensitivity to key transport planning questions.

• The UTS study must identify and explore key transport definition questions linked to large Trans-European projects, and their territorial implications (in terms of both territorial constraints to transport implementation, and transport induction of future development patterns).

The experience of the last decades in monitoring different transport infrastructure projects has made experts much more aware of the limitations of the existing forecast models. According to this fact, the UTS methodology considers quantitive models as a tools to indicate significant issues and to test alternative scenarios, rather than to predict the future evolution of the whole European territorial system. The UTS study is focused on a long-term and Trans-European views. Therefore, short-term impacts, partial mobility aspects or local considerations are taken into account when having global implications.

The UTS study methodology has been based on two complementary and simultaneous approaches: Modelisation and Case-Studies.

The UTS Modelisation Exercise (a top-down approach): The UTS System

A new Geographical Information System (the so-called UTS System) has been built to support detailed transport multimodal graphs (12.761 archs and 6.240 nodes), covering all countries included in the UTS Study (E.U. countries, Norway and Switzerland). Supply-oriented measures based on Accessibility indicators, for both passengers and freight, have been especially designed and applied, as well as more conventional multimodal traffic simulations. The modelisation exercise is a typically top-down approach that provides synthetic and global results from a Trans-European view.

The aim of the original Accessibility indicators defined for the UTS study (CON(T) for passengers, and FreR(M) and FreC(T) for freight) is to represent the transformations that changes in transportation endowment will likely induce in the development trends across Europe. The formulation of these concepts into concrete accessibility indicators followed the so-called Connectivity approach, which emphasis the conditions for getting access to the different networks, the constraints and discontinuities within them and the conditions for establishing intermodal transfers, and not only the direct traveling time between two nodes. The total time between places is then considered in relation not to its absolute value, but in relation to the existing thresholds under which passengers and freight systems operate.

• Passengers: CON(T) (MCRIT)

According to recent E.C. reports and experts opinions, daily round trips opportunities for last minute business travellers (travels below 3.0 hours one way door-to-door travel time) is the most relevant accessibility measure to indicate the transport system effectiveness serving the most demanding trips, those more closely related to development opportunities for most economic sectors. On the other hand, at the European scale, below the threshold of 3.0 hours most road, high-speed rail and non-captive air trips occur. Therefore, a measure based on daily round trips can provide useful insights into the impacts of TETN on modal comparative advantages.

CON(T) determines the space that can be reached from each place for daily round trips using the fastest available multi-modal chain. CON (T) can be associated to any data linked to the space reached. The total population reachable in less than 3.0 hours has been adopted to allow an easy reading of the results. Realistic estimates of modal transfer, urban congestion delays and waiting times have been adopted as well.

• Freight: FreC(T) and FreR(M) (INRETS)

The structure of the industrial production sets time limits for freight transportation which are of great economical significance. Thus, what really interests most of the medium/long-distance forwarders is to distribute their freight overnight. It is useless to get goods in the evening or to send them in the morning. As such, the first relevant time limit for freight is the overnight jump. Other limits will naturally be set at 36, 60, 84 hours.

FreC(T) freight accessibility indicator is based on Combined Transport. It evaluates the size of the market that can be reached in a given amount of time (T) by the best road and rail combination. Additionally to FreC(T), FreR(M) has been defined to evaluate the direct costs to get access to a market with a size equal to (M) by road. The market (M) has been evaluated either in terms of population but can be associated to any data linked to the space reached.

• Multimodal Traffic Forecast (MCRIT)

The objective of the traffic simulation was to identify corridors with potential higher traffic increases, and to indicate basic trends related to new modal shift opportunities.

Specific hypotheses adopted for the basic mobilisation exercise: Trips have an exclusive time-elasticity utility function (1), Trips occur within 3.0 hours (therefore, leisure occasional trips and very long distance trips are not considered) (2), Travel times, including modal transfers and delays are the same adopted for CON(T) (3), Traffic generated between pairs of origin-destinations follow basic gravitatory-like expressions (4) and No capacity constraints are applied in the links, but urban road congestion values were maintained (5).

With these hypothesis, key multimodal traffic trends were detected with enough precision to indicate the evolution of modal comparative advantages after TETN, and therefore new modal shift opportunities.

The UTS Case-Studies (a bottom-up approach):
14 Essen Priority Projects

Case-Studies focused on the 14 Essen Priority projects provided for a realistic and bottom-up approach to complement the modelisation exercise. Case-Studies have required the production of precise thematic cartography at 1:250.000 / 1:500.000 for all the projects as well as making extensive field-trips to contact most National Transport Administrations.

Essen Priority projects represent about 2.670 km of motorways, 3.016 km of HST, 2.420 km of upgraded rail, 125 km of conventional rail and 1 airport (Malpensa).

The costs of the Essen Projects are rather heterogeneous. While 10 projects are below 5.000 MECUS, four are above 10.000 MECUS. The cost of projects in relation to national GDP use to be below 2.5%. Projects above 2.5% are linked to EU Cohesion and Structural Funds contribution (Greek motorways, Irish rail, HST South...), or supported by innovative public-private partnerships and trans-national cost-sharing agreements (Betuwe Line, Oresund Fixed Link, Nordic Triangle...). In these last cases, explicit territorial visions and transport multimodal plans are key elements to optimize benefits and facilitate the implementation process.

More in general, the definition of TETN projects involves a set of new questions (cross-border issues, multi-modality and network cost-benefits distribution at the European scale, environmental transfers...) requiring new planning strategies with more trans-national and multimodal emphasis (rather than national and single modal).

As a result of the Case-Studies, precise knowledge of alternative multimodal and multiple-scale connections under discussion, and possible transport management alternative strategies, was obtained and included in the analysis. In the networked Trans-European Transport System, problems in a given sector or in a given place, can have important impacts all over the networks.

Competitiveness
Impact

Cohesion
Impact

Sustainability
Impact

The following conclusions derive from the results obtained applying both passengers and freight accessibility indicators and complementary traffic simulations.

• Results largely depends on the specific connections of each place.

Average results for cities belonging to the same geographical area, or to the same population range, have big distortions according to their particular connectivity conditions.

• Results are very sensitive to small network modifications.

Given the geographic distribution of the European population, the interconnection between modes (such as HST to central airports) or alternative future traffic management strategies (such as Third Level air services evolution after liberalisation), can dramatically modify the accessibility of most European cities and the functioning of the whole networks.

TENs will produce around a total 20% total increase of the population accessible for daily round trips from all European cities representing NUTS III zones. The more integrated in dense urban networks, the more a given city can take advantage of the Trans-European Transport Networks proposed for 2010. Major relative accessibility gains are produced in small and medium central cities well connected to new High-speed railways (in average, small central cities within large urban regions, or freestanding cities connected to Eurocorridors, will increase their markets for daily round trips from 30-40 million to about 60-80 million people or more).

In average, the biggest central and peripheral cities will have lower relative accessibility gains that central medium cities (usually 10%-15%). A few peripheral cities can have significant increases, but only when they are linked to motorways with big cities, or located along rail main corridors and properly connected to them.

TENs will likely consolidate the current gap between most central and peripheral cities, increasing it lightly. Major competitiveness changes will occur in intermediate hierarchical levels, when properly connected to eurocorridors. Key questions to improve the potential competitiveness of these cities are the interoperability between different rail national systems, and the connections between rail and central airports. The achievement of these network-like advantages would be important for major peripheral cities as well, that could be able to benefit from the existence of good central transport networks largely expanding its daily markets areas.

On the other hand, the average accessibility costs for freight by road ranges from 1 to 4, the best locations being in the Rhenan area and the worst in Greece and Scandinavia. This 1 to 4 factor reflects essentially the impact of the level of geographic centrality (or peripherality) of the areas.

As the cost of transportation represents usually less than 5% of the total cost of a product, and that the difference of the quality of the network amount to at most 15 to 25% of the transportation cost, depending on the size of the market considered the impact of the highway infrastructures endowment on a zone is small in relation to other costs. Therefore, for most economic activities short-term competitiveness opportunities are much more related to passenger transport than to freight transport.

An increasingly important point for the functioning of networks in Europe is the congestion on the TERN. Congestion is not a continuous problem, but appears in picks, while during other periods the infrastructure is underused. Furthermore, the congestion on one segment not only depends on the traffic on this segment but also on the traffic in other segments. Some analysis performed in the framework of the on-going SAM project in France show that for medium range trips (300 km) between the Belgian ports and Paris, in areas with very dense traffic, the maximum gap between the total transit time during the most congested period and the period with the lower congestion is around 15%, but differ according to the location of the final destination around Paris. So the most important impact of congestion is linked to the final urban destination, which will differ from one user to another.

A few areas were congestion can have an effect for road transit traffic have been identified. The first one is Paris-Ile-de-France, which generates very dense local traffic flows, and does not possess an efficient by-pass itinerary far enough from the city to avoid local traffic (such as in London, Berlin or Rome). Other areas are the Ruhr areas, and several parts of Benelux where the urban fabric is diffused, and where highways have both local and interegional high intensities of traffic. In other parts of Germany, one can find highways with heavy traffics, but usually the speed for the trucks is not too slow. In conclusion, there is a need for clarifying long-distance motorway by-passes in densely urbanized urban areas.

The role of the network physical configuration must be also taken into account. One reason for the low ranking of south-western France and northern Spain is the fact that many French highways lead to Paris which has a high cost to cross (low speed) and which implies not using the shortest route.

TETN will induce new relations with cohesion and territorial integration interest (peripheral and/or trans-national): From around 50%, TETN new projects will facilitate that about 60% of future relations below 3 hours had trans-national character or involved at least a peripheral origin or destination. Connections between peripheral cities will be easier due to the large motorway investments in Greece, Spain, Scandinavia and in rural areas in the interior of France. In these countries, total relative accessibility increases are lightly higher than in more central countries.

A key transport question is how to take advantage of the short-term excess of capacity of most new peripheral infrastructures. Motorway toll alternative policies, and HST interoperability with conventional rail, as well as connection to regional transport networks, should be carefully analysed in a context where traffic must be pulled up to optimize both transport investments and enhance economic development.

At the same time, more opportunities for peripheral cities will appear when central airports are linked to HST stations or when new HST lines are connected to other conventional lines. Below 3:00 hours, TETN will increase by 10% all multimodal relations. Above 3.00 hours, air relations are predominant and most of them have a cohesion interest. Therefore, above this threshold, air services strategies (Third Level) have the greatest interest from a European Cohesion view.

Connections to metropolitan and regional transport systems and to HST lines are key questions to be solved. Missing multimodal and multiple-scale air connections, as well as air traffic have a much more stronger impact on Trans-European Cohesion that most road and rail missing links.

Main factors for cost differentiation (after the geographical centrality aspect) are the presence of tolls and the price of sea crossings. These effects mainly affect the southern parts of Europe, Scandinavia, Greece and the islands. Tolls largely explain the choice by lorry drivers of routes that avoid areas with high toll costs. In particular, they try to avoid France and prefer to drive along its northern and eastern border (in Belgium or in Germany), when it does not increase too much the distance of the trip, and if congestion is not to high.

For large markets (EU), the most peripheral areas have often a rather better relative index than more central areas with the same type of infrastructure endowment. This is due to the fact that, coming from very far, drivers can better optimise their route by really choosing the most direct highway route when the network is dense enough, as it is in central European regions. The share of normal road is thus reduced, and the route is more direct than for shorter trips where the smallest detour costs more in percentage of total cost. This fact leads to the conclusion that peripheral long-distance trips by road profit the most from the dense highway network of the center, in terms of accessibility to the total European market.

The road network has a relatively homogenous impact on long distance freight haulage, and interregional traffic, new infrastructures won't have much effect in term of transport costs. On the opposite, very efficient combined transport services can bring a strong increase in the accessibility of a given region. Good multimodal routes, combining medium distance road haulage (less than one-day) in the periphery and train haulage in the center of the continent, might become the best way to increase cohesion between central areas and peripheries.

TETN global impacts will be focused on the increase of rail comparative advantages against road and air. Rail will be the faster transport mode for 45% of potential relations below three hours (in 1995 it is the fastest for 19%) in terms of total number of people reached by using the mode.

TETN will have a different impact in central and peripheral areas. In peripheral areas road and air supply will still provide most of the accessibility gains. Therefore, environmental benefits will be related only to the potential transfer of externalities from a few congested urban links to external by-passes. Major sustainability challenges related to central capital cities will be generated by the expansion of metropolitan and urban areas (in some cases becoming trans-national and requiring an appropriate integration between local and Trans-European transport planning).

The success of CT occurs only where physical or administrative strict constraints for road haulage exists. The Trans-alpine market has developed thanks to the very stringent road transit policies of Switzerland and Austria. German traffic is linked to heavy congestion on the main axes. Eastern cross-border rolling road has developed to overcome the long waiting queues at the eastern borders of the EU and to avoid transit through Austria. Looking at this, one can wonder if the aim to promote CT can be achieved in Europe without a voluntary policy to shift the modal equilibrium. The analysis of domestic markets entails however some hope.

The first area where CT has proved its competitiveness is the transport between main economic centers in Germany, separated a distance over 250 km. There, an effective overnight service has been developed for relations affecting massive flows.

Another important area of opportunity for CT success are transcontinental flows. The concentration of intercontinental flows on a few European ports ensure a massification of container flows toward and from the continent. The main ports of the northern range (from Le Havre to Lubeck, but mainly Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg and Bremen) have a function for serving the whole continent, while other ports of national importance (especially on the Mediterranean cost) have a smaller hinterland. Therefore, those ports constitute a natural pole for the development of CT. Short-sea shipping can become a very attractive alternative to road only if adequate legislation and road pricing policies are adopted.

If one wants to achieve significant sustainability results through modal shift towards Combined Transport, investments on new tracks won't be sufficient. The actual pattern of Combined Transport in Europe shows the need for a voluntary policy enabling this mode to compete with road (mostly through internalising external effects such as safety or pollution). This policy must be enforced (the models show that an increase by 30% of daily road driving time, or speed means a severe reduction on Combined Transport competitiveness). Focus must also be put on the quality of the service (transit time, efficiency of terminals, guarantee of punctuality) and adequate organisation enabling flows massification.

The decision to adopt the 14 Essen Priority Projects in the framework of TETN, is the result of a multi-party negotiation between the Member States and the European Commission, involving political, institutional and financial questions, as well as specific transport and territorial goals. The central hypothesis to explore in the 14 projects is how the integration (or lack) of territorial visions and multimodal plans can facilitate (or constrain) the project definition and afterwards help to improve its impacts.

Field-tips to contact most National Transport Administrations and European Institutions, such as the EIB, have been made in order to get updated and first-hand information.

Definition and financing implications of Essen Projects

The Essen Priority Projects are extremely large projects, often covering different countries. Most projects have a rather modal emphasis (motorway, high-speed rail, conventional rail, airport) and adopt a predominantly single-scale approach at national level. Trans-national coordination is devoted to assure Trans-European continuity. Some projects, such as PBKAL (in the Netherlands and Belgium border), HST East (in the French and German border) and few others, still require concrete agreements to assure the appropriate continuity.

The largest projects contain sub-projects with particular territorial goals (the case of the Greek motorways, PBKAL, Brenner, HST South, Lisboa-Valladolid...). The integration of sub-projects in large projects facilitates global corridor-like approaches at the Trans-European scale (in the case of Greek motorways, revenues obtained in Pathe sections can be devoted to support investments in western Via Egantia sections, Brenner tunnel cost can be analysed in the broad context of the whole north-south corridor...).

The cost of the projects ranges from some 20.000 MECUS (it is the case of Brenner and South HST) to only 300 MECUS (the case of Irish rail). The relative cost of the project in relation to the national GDP, produce a first useful insight into its financial feasibility. Despite the absolute difference between the cost of each project, when considering the cost in relation to the different countries a much more uniform picture emerges. A first look at the figures shows that, in general, projects with total cost representing more than 2.5% of the national GDP have higher financing problems than the others.

In some cases, extremely rich territorial analysis have been produced before defining the project and, in fact, the final strategic definition of the project has been the result of previous extensive territorial analysis (the Oresund Fixed Link and E18 motorway Helsinki-Turku in the Nordic Triangle, are probably two of most interesting experiences in this respect, as well as the Betuwe Line). While some projects have extensive impact and definition studies (more than one hundred in the case of the Betuwe Line), other may have very few and mainly devoted to overcome conventional administrative procedures.

Territorial Implications of Key Transport Definition Questions

Projects use to emphasise one scale (usually it is national) and only one transportation mode (road, rail or airport). Most of them are large projects having heterogeneous sections (the German, Austrian and Italian sections of the HST North-South, Pathe and Via Egnatia section in the Greek motorways...). The relatively more complex project is the Oresund Fixed Link, which integrated road and rail, as well as airport connections and ferry aspects, and local and international scales. Given the size of Essen Priority Projects, it is clear that all of them should require a much more explicit integration of other modes and scales in their definition.

On the other hand, projects use to be focused on one territorial goal, such as Competitiveness (for instance Malpensa airport), Cohesion (such as Lisboa-Valladolid Motorway, Via Egnatia interior sections) and Sustainability (such as the Austrian and Italian sections of HST North-South, HST-CT France-Italy...). By focussing on only one objective, projects risk to loose undirect benefits. In an increasingly networked transportation networks, the synergies between undirect and local minor benefits will produce important overall impacts.

HST most competitive projects are located in northern central areas. There are however large HST projects planned in Spain, the South of Italy and Sweden. In northern central areas almost all major airports are connected to HST links (except London airports) and key transport questions are related to interoperability and adequate connections to conventional rail networks. In peripheral areas, key questions are related to the use of the excess of capacity that new lines will have. Regional services, freight and other compatible services should be considered in order to optimize the utility of the investment. Airport connections could have a significant cohesion impact (linking medium size cities to air services) in a few cases.

TE Motorway Projects are mostly located in peripheral countries (Sweden, Ireland, Finland, Greece, Spain and Portugal) where basic motorway endowment is still missing in large areas. Other important national motorway projects are the upgrading of U.K. and Irish axes. The adoption of standard motorway characteristics and the interest of toll implementation are common key-questions for most of these projects. Short-term financial constraints risk to produce sub-optimal transport investments: Toll can divert traffic (especially freight, week-end journeys and other trips having high price-sensitivity) and short-distance rural trips from using the motorway. Lack of uniform characteristics can produce important capacity reductions and accidents.

The financial success of TE projects with sustainabily interest (and other projects such as Swiss Trans-Alps projects) largely depends on the adoption of voluntarist road pricing policies devoted to encourage a modal shift from road and in to rail transport for passengers, and especially from road to rail (or ferry and short-sea shipping).

Based on the results of Models and Case-Studies, the following Strategies are submit to E.C. consideration:

I Encouraging the best territorial definition of TETN large projects

I-1) In the context of a much more complex process of implementing transport projects, deeper territorial analysis is needed to facilitate realistic cost-sharing schemes, enhance profitability, clarify risks and therefore attract private partners. The experience of the Essen Priority Projects clearly shows that projects integrated in a clear territorial vision tend to optimise their implementation and potential impacts.

I-2) The Essen Projects defined according to territorial visions (especially the few of them included in explicit territorial and multimodal National Plans, for instance German, Dutch or Danish projects) are at the same time those with less feasibility problems. It is important to note that projects with costs exceeding 2.5% of GDP and without implementation problems, belong to countries with high GDP per capita, long planning tradition and open public participation (Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany...).

I-3) The detailed territorialized analysis of TETN projects is also needed to assess political decisions (often based on rough 1:5.000.000 abstract schemes and crude macro-economic estimates). Technical project designs and environmental impact analysis are made at very low scales (below 1:5.000). An intermediate analysis at 1:500.000 / 1:1.000.000 scale is therefore required to assess strategic definition questions.

II Planning key Trans-European Multimodal Transport Questions

II-1) The networked character of the future Trans-European Transport System produces a new geographical redistribution of the transportation costs and benefits. Therefore, the overall functioning of the networks depends upon multi-party agreements to define new schemes for cost and benefit shares

II-2) Most European cities have obsolete road and rail configurations, and relatively poor rail connections to airports. The lack of capacity solving these constraints would block potential benefits of TETN.

II-3) Future re-definition of TERN should identify those axes with "TERN Eurocorridors" characteristics (axes where long-distance traffic tends to concentrate). Specific analysis of major road (and rail, in same cases) metropolitan by-passes and rings is required.

III Leading the TETN implementation process

III-1) There is an increasing mismatch between the new transport planning questions and traditional decision-making processes, still sectorial (rather than multimodal) and constrained by rigid territorial jurisdictions (rather than trans-national and simultaneously open to all territorial scales involved).

III-2) The EU activity in encouraging negotiations among a larger number of heterogeneous actors, both in transport definition and in spatial development at European scale, requires the identification of key questions and their clear presentation to all decision-makers. The UTS System developed within the UTS Study constitutes a useful tool for this purpose.

III-3) The experience of Essen Priority Projects implementation, shows that carrying out in advance pro-active territorial analysis, open to all decision-makers and public participation, is the most efficient way to properly channel public and institutional participation in the transport definition process, as well as increasing all potential benefits related to large transport infrastructure projects.

IV Monitoring Large Transport Infrastructure Projects

IV-1) Critical decisions in terms of TETN territorial impacts are not only related to the project physical definition and implementation (infrastructural aspects): Development is a process occurring over time. Permanent monitoring of the real utility provided by the infrastructure to users and socio-economic actors in general, is needed to facilitate efficient infrastructure management. Services, tolls, fares... should be adopted according to the changing conditions of the transportation demand and the overall territorial goals the project is seeking to achieve.

IV-2) Monitoring the impacts of large projects is essential in order to obtain updated information to manage the existing infrastructure and to improve the definition of future projects. Given the complexity of large multimodal and trans-national projects, and their enormous financial requirements, systematic monitoring exercises of impacts would become basic assessment tools to support the whole transport infrastructure decision-making process.

IV-3) Final impacts of TETN projects will finally depend on the willingness and capacity of local socio-economic main actors to take advantage of the new opportunities. An institution such as the EC can play an important role in stimulating private actors and other local and regional institutions to plan in advance future development strategies, but very hardly it can substitute them and assure permanent and well spread development success.

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