In subsequent Green and White Papers, the European Commission has expressed interest in the instrument of charging for infrastructure use as a means to increase efficiency and sustainability of the transport system. In parallel, several research projects carried out under the umbrella of the Fourth and Fifth Framework Programmes were carried out to deepen theoretical knowledge and to bridge the gap to implementation. Particularly the UNITE research project was an ambitious attempt to broaden the theoretical and practical basis for so-called marginal social cost charging. The project started off with a series of methodological and theoretical studies which have been applied in case studies during the second stage of UNITE. These case studies were summarised in a synthesis report. At the moment, both theoretical and applied research into marginal social cost charging seem to have arrived at a level that ease of access to information and transparency of information have become bottlenecks in policy making. Therefore, this study aims at making the research results from UNITE and from comparable studies more accessible and transparent. Moreover, most recommended methods are too complicated, time-consuming and have too high data requirements to be applicable in practice. Therefore, the Commission feels the need for simplified approaches for getting estimations of marginal costs. The main objective of this study is to make the methodology to calculate marginal social costs for different transport modes easier accessible and applicable and more transparent to a broader group of users than just the inner circle of economist and transport experts involved in the research so far. The report takes into account infrastructure costs, congestion and scarcity costs, accident costs, air pollution and noise for the modes road, rail and air transport. (Author/publisher) This report may be accessed by Internet users at http://www.ce.nl/
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