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The international literature around the impacts of long-distance rail transport such as high-speed railways (HSR) reveals that social equity impacts have rarely been fully examined or taken into consideration in appraisal. Several methodological and contextual policy factors may have contributed to expanding this gap. As a result, the HSR’s potential to act as a transport and land use development policy tool to reduce accessibility inequalities and promote social inclusion remains unexplored in most cases. The present article aims to shed light on current methodological appraisal approaches in order to examine social equity issues around HSR projects, in terms of social sustainability. Further, the research methodology uses an in-depth investigation around one strategic railway project selected in Italy, a country that is investing in HSR. The paper is organized as follows: firstly, there is an introduction that refers to the specific case study. Soon after the paper illustrates the peculiar elements of the cost–benefit analysis of the HSR link Bari–Naples and considers the scientific literature on the issue. Then the novelty of equity considerations is presented in methodological terms and as a result of a concrete consultation process. Finally conclusions close the paper.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) plays a prominent part in the process of building the ethical, responsible, and sustainable consciousness of future generations and in addressing the sustainability challenge that society is facing. Nevertheless, very few methodologies have been developed to assess the effectiveness of sustainable and responsible teaching, so far. EffSET is a qualitative and quantitative instrument which was developed to enable Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and instructors to classify and analyse their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability related courses and teaching concepts according to different criteria. The tool is also intended for benchmarking courses and HEIs in time (i.e. against previous years’ evaluation) and space (i.e. against comparable courses/HEIs) and to become an instrument to foster debate on ESD within and outside the institution. The idea behind EffSET is that a holistic perspective that involves, in an inclusive approach, values, strategy, operations, activities, stakeholders, structures, etc. of the HEIs and considers inputs and knowledge from different field of studies must sustain CSR/sustainability curricula/course if an effective impact on students’ long-term ethical, sustainable, and responsible behaviour is the envisaged learning outcome. This paper introduces EffSET and discusses its methodology. Preliminary results from very first applications are, also, showed.

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