Over the last three years TRANSFORUM has brought together policymakers, analysts and developers of policy impact appraisal tools to assess the state-of-the-art in transport policy evaluation methods and their fitness for purpose in the changing policy environment. The policy environment is changing due to different developments, like globalisation, the rising importance of the knowledge economy and high energy prices. Such developments have a major impact on Europe and its citizens. Their supra-national effects,such as the impacts of increasing mobility of people and goods, require initiatives at European level. The European Commission, in particular, plays a significant role in this respect as interest cuts across departments and policy issues, such as the renewed Lisbon Strategy on Growth and Jobs. Europe needs to keep its transport policymaking process targeted at tackling the challenges. This requires a constant search for appropriate improvements in methods of policy impact appraisal. TRANSFORUM has taken up the challenge of facilitating this search by organising several Forum meeting in which scientists, policy analysts, policy makers and other stake holdersfrom several European countries were actively involved in the assessment process. Thanks to this approach, the project has resulted in several recommendations aimed at improving the fitness-for-purpose for future policy impact appraisal. The focus of these recommendations is on improvements in the whole chain of transport policy impact appraisal and they can be considered relevant for all those involved in assessing the impacts of transport policies. The recommendations address issues such as definitions and indicators used, transport modelling and supporting transport analysis tools and also include suggestions for further research on these topics. Some ofthese recommendations are briefly mentioned below. With regards to definitions and indicators, the use of one common set of indicators for transport policy appraisal is recommended and a first proposal for such a set, derived from a systematic analysis of EC policy objectives, is presented. A basic, very important recommendation regarding transport models is that themodels should first and foremost be developed based on the users' information needs. In order to make the present and future needs of policy makersmore clear, it is recommend that plans for model development should be drawn up and refined in joint cooperation by policy makers and researchers, in order to have a joint and consistent agenda for future research and development. Based on the assessment of two decades of EU transport modellingresearch, it is recommended to use the TRANS-TOOLS model development as the starting point for recommended discussions on incorporating multiple-actor user needs. On the more general issue of transport policy appraisal, it is recommended that, in order to have more impact on policy development and implementation, the results of policy research projects should be presented in a form that is simple, concise and clearly communicating the key issues. In relation to transport models, the efficiency of post processingshould be enhanced in order to make model behaviour and results understandable for a wider audience. It is also recommended that stakeholders participation should be a basic element within European transport research projects. Mixing theoretical and practical knowledge and people (i.e. researchers and civil servants) within the research projects may give the researchresults a great advantage in their implementation phase. For the coveringabstract see ITRD E137145.
Abstract