This paper systematically reviews two questions central for environmental impact assessment: What are the relevant environmental impacts of transport? And, are they improving, i.e. what is their overall assessment? We focus on a European approach as illustrated by the 'Transport and Environment Reporting Mechanism (TERM)' of the European Environment Agency. Although this system is in practical operation since 1999, a systematic review of the TERM indicators still identifies numerous points for improvement: Redundant, non-pertinent and non-representative indicators can be eliminated and reduces data demand by a factor of three. Overview can be improved by a classification according to environmental impact categories. These criteria allow to streamline the current twenty-four indicators to a maximum number of seven key indicators. For the first overall assessment of environmental impact of road transport in Europe we apply the ELECTRE III method. This ordinal multi-criteria assessment method allows to systematically identify a diverse range of individual evaluations, that still ascertain that the environmental performance improves from 1990 to 2010 in the European Union (EU15). However, the data uncertainty for air pollution and noise indicators needs to reduced significantly and indicators for land take and fragmentation should be redefined to make them sensitive to temporal change. Otherwise, these indicators cannot be sensibly interpreted and efforts are wasted. The systematic analysis provides arguments to focus further efforts on a reduction of fuel consumption and minimal infrastructure construction in order to improve the environmental performance of road transport in Europe. For the covering abstract please see ITRD E135207.
Abstract