Planning paradigm and policy recommendations
This work package is concerned with overarching institutional barriers on a national level. The more specific institutional conditions are treated in work package 4, but these two work packages will closely together. In the second part of this work package researchers will develop policy recommendations for local, regional and national levels.
Aim and research questions
The overarching aim of this work package is to analyse how to turn the development of the accessibility and mobility system into a sustainable direction, by means of planning and policy measures.
Research questions addressed:
- What are the barriers for changing the present planning and policy paradigm?
- How may these barriers be overcome?
- Which accessibility services – including Integrated accessibility services – need to be stimulated, and which (if any) need to be contained/regulated?
- What changes regarding policy and planning need to be realized to achieve acceptable and sustainable sets of accessibility services, as resulting from work packages 4-6? And how could the implementation be achieved?
Work package leader
Tasks
Task 7.1: How to change the present planning and policy paradigm
The aims of this task are: first to identify barriers to a transformation of the present unsustainable policy and planning paradigm, and second to analyse ways of overcoming these barriers.
The following research questions will be addressed:
- What are the barriers for changing the present planning and policy paradigm?
- How may these barriers be overcome?
In this task a more thorough analysis of the possibilities to change the present planning paradigm is made. Although specific planning and policy issues related to certain ASIs have been treated in other parts of Mistra SAMS, this work package concerns the more general paradigm permeating planning and policy making nationally (and potentially in rest of Europe). An important issue concerns the present “gap” between strategic policy documents (like national transport policy goals or the “four-step-principle”) and practical planning and policy decisions, e.g. the decisions to build specific infrastructure objects.
Here, an institutional perspective need to be applied. An issue related to this is the present imbalance between the two Swedish national transport policy objectives . While it’s rather easy to apply the objective economic efficiency, the objective “ a sustainable transport system” has not yet been successfully operationalized. The consequence being that the first objective implicitly gets more weight. Possibilities to raise the practical impact of the latter objective will also be explored in this task.
User value and users participating
The results will be relevant for actors involved in policy and planning. Trafikverket, Stockholm, Malmö etc vill be involved.
International co-operation
Exchange of experiences will be achieved by the help of the International Young Research Team and the Scientific Advisory Panel.
Task leaders: Karolina Isaksson, VTI
Task 7.2 Policy recommendations
The aim of this task is to give recommendations on what combinations of policies and planning directives that are appropriate in order to reach a sustainable Swedish accessibility and mobility system.
The research question is:
- What changes regarding policy and planning need to be realized to achieve acceptable and sustainable sets of accessibility services, as resulting from work packages 4-6?
This task takes as point of departure the appropriate (from a sustainability perspective) ASIs from work packages 4 and 5 as well as the images of future Swedish accessibility and mobility 2030/2050 as outlined in work package 6. It then analyses what kind of planning and policy responses are needed in order to realize those future states. The analysis of institutional barriers in Task 7.1 will obviously constitute an important
basis. The policies and planning measures should ideally be feasible, effective in reaching targets, economically efficient and acceptable by voters. It’s clear that in many cases compromises between these criteria need to be made. Economic instruments, e.g. taxing carbon dioxide emissions, are often effective in reaching emissions targets, but may meet substantial barriers regarding acceptance. In such situations, it may therefore be worthwhile to consider instruments which are not primarily directed towards carbon dioxide emissions, but have a beneficial impact on them while often being more acceptable by users. It has also been shown that it’s
often easier to fulfill these criteria if policies are carefully combined into packages containing mutually supporting policy measures (
OPTIC, 2011
).
This task will be carried out partly in parallel with work package 6. For instance, some changes to the system, like continuous tracking of people’s geographical position supporting highly effective dynamic distance-travelled-charges may not be acceptable from an integrity perspective. So, the outlining of images of the future accessibility and mobility system and the corresponding planning and policy measures will be an iterative process.
User value and users participating
The results will be relevant in particular for planners and policy makers, but also for others actors affected by policy and planning. Trafikverket, Stockholm, Malmö, Ericsson, Sunfleet etc vill be involved.
International co-operation
International best practice will be utilized. The task leader has recently worked with 10 EU-partners in the FP7 project OPTIC which dealt with policy packages for transport.
Task leader: Jonas Åkerman, KTH.