HEATCO: Developing harmonised European approaches for transport costing and project assessment

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 03.0045

Key words (English)

Cost-benefit-analysis; infrastructure project assessment; harmonisation

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: 502481

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 6. Frame Research Programme - 1.8.1 Policy-orientated research

Short description (English)

See abstract

Further information (English)

Full name of research-institution/enterprise:
Ecoplan
Forschung und Beratung in Wirtschaft und Politik

Abstract (English)

High quality facilities for transportation are of vital importance to the economy and the environment. However, there are still no clear guidelines for evaluating the costs and benefits of transport investments and policies agreed among EU Member States. While national evaluation frameworks exist, these methods are inadequate to address specific EU challenges such as cross-border effects or competitiveness. There is a clear need for an unambiguous and harmonised framework for socio- economic evaluation of transport policies. Although first steps were taken in the EUNET and JASON projects, further integration between existing methods and practices is necessary and will be addressed in HEATCO.
HEATCO's primary objective is the development of harmoIiised guidelines for project assessment and transport costing on EU level. This includes the provision of a consistent framework for monetary valuation based on the principles of welfare economics. Based on work undertaken e.g. in the EUNET project, current project assessment practice in the EU member states and acceding countries will be reviewed and analysed. Existing practice in the assessment of the value of a) time and congestion, b) accident risk reduction, c) health impacts and nuisances from pollutant and noise emissions, d) infrastructure costs will be compared to the theoretical and empirical evidence from the literature. As a key feature of HEATCO, harmonisation of guidelines will be organised in a cycle process, involving representatives from member and acceding countries from the beginning of guideline development, with discussions and revision of different guideline versions. A number of surveys will be carried out to help fill the most significant gaps in monetary values and add knowledge on the issue of transferability and comparability of values between countries. The harmonised guidelines will be applied to 3 TEN transport infrastructure projects to illustrate differences to existing CBA evaluations.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 03.0045