Highway planning ignores climatic targets
The Swedish Road Administration, our national highway authority, does not take long-term climatic targets into account as they plan for the construction of new through roads in the Stockholm area – and nor do other parties involved! This is asserted by Dr. Göran Finnveden, senior scientist at the KTH Div. of Environmental Strategies Research (formerly FMS), and Thomas Sterner, Professor of environmental economics at the Gothenburg School of Business Economics & Laws, in a joint report presented by them recently.
This lack of consideration for the set long-term climatic targets is a problem – fulfilling these will require powerful measures, said the two authors. If decision-makers were serious about their targets, one of the items to be studied would have to be the highways, and if these will be at all “profitable” in the future.
– This is a matter of credibility, says Dr. Finnveden. If those people are serious about the targets they set they just have to study what the consequences of different investments in infrastructure are, too.
Their report is now being published by KTH. It consists of a study into the socioecomic estimate made for ”Bypass Stockholm”, which also covers ”Diagonal Ulvsunda”. When an analysis of this estimate is made, it appears to have shortcomings; these contradict its final conclusion, that both alternatives should become socioeconomically profitable.
Some essential factors found by the authors of the report but not identified by the official estimate are that the basic traffic scenario does not include any congestion charges, nor has the consumption of energy, and its emissions, during road construction and maintenance been included. Likewise, the socioeconomic cost of encroaching upon natural and social environments has not been taken into account, either. Göran Finnveden says:
– Every single one of these factors alone might affect the end result, that is, so as to make the investment less profitable – or even downright unprofitable. And all summed up they would indeed affect it a lot!