Performance Assessment of the Transport Sustainability in the European Union

Sarah B Gruetzmacher,Clara B Vaz,Ângela P Ferreira

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-69136-3_8

Abstract

Based in the current growth rate of metropolitan areas, providing infrastructures and services to allow the safe, quick and sustainable mobility of people and goods, is increasingly challenging. The European Union has been promoting diverse initiatives towards sustainable transport development and environment protection by setting targets for changes in the sector, as those proposed in the 2011 White Paper on transport. Under this context, this study aims at evaluating the environmental performance of the transport sector in the 28 European Union countries, from 2015 to 2017, towards the policy agenda established in strategic documents. The assessment of the transport environmental performance was made through the aggregation of seven sub-indicators into a composite indicator using a Data Envelopment Analysis approach. The model used to determine the weights to aggregate the sub-indicators is based on a variant of the Benefit of the Doubt model with virtual proportional weights restrictions. The results indicate that, overall, the European Union countries had almost no variation on its transport environmental performance during the time span under analysis. The inefficient countries can improve the transport sustainability mainly by drastically reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels combustion, increasing the share of freight transport that uses rail and waterways and also the share of transport energy from renewable sources.

Highlights

The interest in sustainability and sustainable development has been increasing in the past decades [1]
The selection of the sub-indicators was based on a literature review of composite indicator (CI) with similar conceptual framework, the goals of transport sustainability mentioned in the Roadmap (EU’s White Paper [5]) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) [6], while taking into consideration the data that was available for all the European Union (EU) countries in the time span under analysis
The transport environmental performance was assessed for the 28 EU countries, from 2015 to 2017

Summary

Introduction

The interest in sustainability and sustainable development has been increasing in the past decades [1]. The rapidly growing population of the cities, their aging infrastructure and the environmental concerns continue to challenge and pressure policymakers. Providing the infrastructure and services to allow safe, quick and sustainable mobility of people and goods is increasingly challenging [2]. Investing in improving the quality and sustainability of the transport system will improve the productivity, attractiveness and quality of life of the cities. The transport sector has become one of the main subjects with regards to sustainable development. In the European Union (EU), the transport sector employs more than 11 million people and accounts for about 5% of Europe’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). An effective transportation system should contribute positively to the economic growth, to social development through the fair use of the natural resources and to environmental protection [4]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion