One of the aims of the Dutch government is the delinking of economic growth from environmental pressure. The preliminary study documented here contains a proposal to put `delinking' into practice in the traffic and transport sector. The authors have chosen to relate `delinking' to the ultimate goals of the government in the economic, societal, environmental and spatial quality domains. Traffic and transport play an important economic and social role. Those roles are summarised in the terminology that traffic and transport generate prosperity. Transport also leads to pressures on the environment and on the spatial quality, both of these aspects are summarised in the terminology that transport and traffic generate pressure on people's physical environment. `Delinking' aims, in essence, at reducing the pressure caused by transport, and at the same time, allowing the prosperity generated by transport to increase and/or remain constant. The proposal is to put `delinking' into practice for a later evaluation of policy proposals or autonomous developments. It is proposed to evaluate `delinking' in the traffic and transport sector in three steps: (i) subdividing the generation of prosperity by transport, into `economic' and `social' prosperity; subdividing the pressure on the physical environment into `pressure on environment and safety' and on spatial quality. Indicators have been proposed to measure changes brought about in these four domains of `delinking'; (ii) a normal scenario analysis is proposed for measuring the changes in the indicators. In a reference scenario, indicator levels are determined for a chosen reference year or years (e.g., 2010, 2020 and/or 2030). In this way, the impacts of an autonomous trend or a policy proposal on the indicator levels are estimated by comparison with the reference scenario; and (iii) changes in the indicator levels are presented either with figures or with plus and minus signs, plusses indicating a positive contribution to achieving the goal, and minuses, a negative contribution. Indicators showing `plusses' in all four domains provide the confirmation that a development or a policy proposal will lead to `delinking'. In practice, the results will probably not be straightforward, e.g., a policy proposal will only partly result in more prosperity and less pressure on the environment. In conclusion, the method proposed consists of a structured indicator overview for use by policy makers to evaluate if a certain development or policy proposal will bring about `delinking'. The proposed method should first be tested on specific cases; secondly, research should be carried out to develop new indicators, especially in the relatively new domains of `social prosperity' and `spatial quality'. (A)
Abstract