Urban transport investments and changes in travel demand: evidence from European case studies

The work presented in this article has been developed within the European TranSEcon project which addresses the socio­economic impacts of transport investments and policies.Urban transport policies and investments are implemented on the basis of urban transport planning and management and therefore their evaluation is usually linked to performance in terms of transport operations (e.g. travel­speed, travel­safety). However, urban transport policies and investments may have wider socio­economic impacts and effects not only along the corridor or within the areas that are designed to serve, but throughout the city­region and through time. Therefore it is necessary to carry out research in evaluating these socio­economic impacts and effects stemming from urban transport policies and investments.The main expected technical achievement of the TranSEcon research is to provide empirical evidence regarding the social and economic long­term impacts and effects of urban transport investments and policies, in order to inform city authorities in their transport and related policy development and infrastructure planning, as well as to support relevant EU policies. Qualitative and quantitative evidence regarding the existence of the direct and indirect effects of transport infrastructure investments is based upon case studies in 13 European cities belonging to 11 countries. The selected case studies cover a good range of city and intervention types (in terms of geographical distribution, city size, public transport investments). All the case studies within TranSEcon are public transport projects. However beyond this common aspect there is great variety.