An action plan for policies to deal with congestion by reducing the need for road
travel in Europe is the goal of a continent-wide study commissioned by the European Union
and now being conducted by an international consortium, headed by a consulting firm in the
United Kingdom.
The study, titled "Strategies to Avoid Road Travel" or START, has begun with
a candid look at road use reduction strategies and their economic and social implications.
The promotion of "telecommuting," also known as "teleworking," is one
such strategy to reduce the number of people driving to work on any given day, but its has
a downside: greater social isolation and its attendant problems.
Congestion pricing is another reduction strategy, but it is not known how this might
affect different economic groups and whether it could ultimately have an adverse impact on
costs and competitiveness.
START will seek to quantify impacts while assessing the trade-offs involved and the
long-term effects of the different strategies. The project will cover urban and regional
road travel and will focus on the relationship between land use planning and the need for
commuting. Information will be collected from published surveys, along with evidence
provided by case studies and outputs from multi-modal computer models.
The results of existing and planned public opinion surveys will be used to help
understand public attitudes toward commuting and road travel, taking into account
differences in perception among respondents in the different EU member states.
The ultimate objective of the START project is to produce an action plan of policy
packages to reduce automotive travel on the urban and regional roads of the EU member
states.
The plan will be expected to cover all government levels involved in decision making
and to be sufficiently flexible to be applicable across the territories of the member
states, taking account of differences in ethnic, economic, and social environments.
Marchial Echenique & Partners, the Cambridge, U.K., consulting firm that is
coordinating the project, is partnering with firms in Spain, Italy, and Finland.
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