Providing Sustainable Transport Infrastructure through Internalization of External Costs: A Case Study from South-Eastern European Countries

Abstract

The most important goals for transport systems development in the European countries are related to increasing transport system efficiency and sustainability and pushing national economies’ competitiveness. After a thorough analysis of transport costs, a system of measures should be undertaken to achieve these goals. All these issues are on the top of the political agenda so far, considering the impacts of the COVID pandemic in recent years and the current developments of Just Transition and the European Green Deal ambitions. However, they could not be reached without accounting for transport’s social costs, especially external ones. The chapter’s main objective is to demonstrate the opportunities of the internalization approach and its updates for evaluating marginal external transport costs on a national level for South-Eastern European countries. As a result, a background will be provided to help policymakers in these counties to prioritize measures and projects envisaged in inland modes of transport based on potential savings for the society, which is not done so far. The chapter also discusses the effects of improving transport infrastructure functioning and performance by using internalization of external costs.