Challenges and Opportunities in Early Stage Planning of Transport Infrastructure Projects: Environmental Aspects in the Strategic Choice of Measures Approach

Abstract

The Strategic Choice of Measures (SCM) approach aims to integrate different perspectives and identify measures to adapt new infrastructure projects to their local context at an early stage of Swedish transport planning. SCM is a loosely structured framework for collaboration between actors from, e.g., municipalities and the Swedish Transport Administration, in order to facilitate the coordination of transport planning and land use planning. This paper aims to explore the consideration of environmental aspects in early-stage transport planning by analyzing the SCM approach. An explorative research approach is applied based on literature studies, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group interview. The result shows that in the SCM process, environmental aspects such as noise and air pollution generated by road traffic in urban areas, engage the actors, whereas aspects related to landscape and water were perceived as poorly addressed and received less attention. The consideration of environmental aspects in the SCM process is affected by the local and national authorities’ different interests and the competences involved. To consolidate environmental aspects in early transport planning, these aspects need to be explicitly addressed in the SCM guidelines and the link between the SCM and preceding and following planning stages needs to be strengthened.

Exploring practices for facilitating integrated strategic land use and transport planning in the Nordic countries

“…To identify measures to be included in the National investment plan for transport infrastructure, the so-called Strategic Choice of Measures (SCM) approach is applied. The SCM is applied by the state, together with other actors, to suggest measures to be included in the National Investment Plan for transport infrastructure as well as other plans (Eckersten et al, 2021;Tornberg & Odhage, 2018). The application of the so-called four-step principle is central when choosing measures through SCM.…”

“…In Sweden, environmental aspects in processes for transport infrastructure linked to the STA are mainly focusing on impact on climate, health, and landscape (STA, 2021). However, in SCM, the consideration of environmental aspects focus mainly on measurable environmental aspects such as noise, while aspects that are more difficult to quantify or garner less attention, such as biodiversity (Eckersten et al, 2021). One reason why only a few environmental aspects are taken into account may be a lack of relevant expert knowledge, which Tennøy et al (2016) consider as fundamental for goal fulfilment.…”

Evaluation of Road Infrastructure Projects: A Life Cycle Sustainability-Based Decision-Making Approach

“…Further, for performing LCC, cost component breakdowns need to be selected according to the goal and scope of assessment [66,67]. ASTM [68] provides a generic LCC model as given in Equation (1). Which incorporates capital cost (C), replacement cost (R), annual operation and maintenance cost (A), damages and repair cost (M), energy cost (E), and salvage (S).…”

“…On the other hand, Azapagic and Perdan [72] discussed the set of indicators for total sustainable development and proposed a general framework to carry out a holistic LCA which includes the environmental, economic, and social indicators. For combining the LCA with LCC and S-LCA, two main approaches have been discussed by Norris [73] and Klöpffer and Renner [70]: (1) develop an integrated framework to carry out a single LCSA assessment (pre-integrated assessment), and (2) perform an individual assessment of each sustainability area and then integrate them (post-assessment integration). Based on their discussions, it was concluded that the single assessment of all the sustainability areas is constrained due to varying methodological approaches, the origin of impact categories, and inconsistency of results.…”

“…This is driven by demographics and sectoral dynamics and requires lasting, insightful, and practical solutions. In the case of physical infrastructure, like mega transportation projects, sustainable project delivery is challenging [1,2]. Road infrastructure projects, in particular, are immensely prone to the fiscal, geographical, and societal risks of project development.…”