Estimations of external costs of traffic in Western Europe. This paper deals with an important part of a research project by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in assignment of the ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, i.e. creating a survey on estimations of external costs of transport in Western Europe. We make a distinction between external costs of infrastructure, traffic accients, air pollution, climate change, noise, congestion, deterioration of landscape quality, and barrier effects. The most important conclusion is that there is enormous variation in estimations of external costs. This variation is caused by several factors, such as differences in the country of estimation, differences in the valuation of external effects and differences in the method of allocating the costs to the transport modes. Moreover, differences in time and place of estimation and differences in traffic characteristics are important for the magnitude of the external cost estimate. (Author/publisher)
Abstract