Report

Deliverables of IMPACT (Internalisation Measures and Policies for All external Cost of Transport)

In the light of the Eurovignette Directive, the European Commission commis-sioned CE Delft to carry out a study on the internalisation of external costs of transport. External cost are cost related to noise, air pollution, accidents, conges-tion and climate change. The study IMPACT (Internationalisation Measures and Policies for All external Cost of Transport) shows that it is possible to estimate these costs in a consistent and scientifically sound way. In addition it concludes that there are important benefits to be expected when these costs are used as a basis for transport pricing, usually referred to as the ‘Polluter pays principle’. IMPACT was carried out by CE Delft, INFRAS, Fraunhofer-ISI, University of Gdansk and IWW and resulted in three Deliverables. The first deliverable (D1 and published in December 2007) is a handbook providing a comprehensive overview of approaches for estimation of external costs. The second deliverable (D2 and published in July 2008) is on road transport infrastructure cost and reve-nue. The third deliverable of the IMPACT project (D3 and also published in July 2008) deals with internalisation measures and policy for all modes of transport and includes an assessment of the impacts of various internalisation approaches. D1 and D3 can also be found on the website of the European Commission as part of the package for greening transport published at the 8th of July 2008. The main recommendation from IMPACT is an amendment of the Eurovignet Di-rective on infrastructure charging for heavy goods vehicles. This Directive turns out to be a major obstacle for charging transport users for the external cost. The European Commission has followed this recommendation by presenting an amendment to the Directive at 8 July 2008. Together with the legislative pro-posal, the European Commission presented a strategy for internalisation the ex-ternal cost of all transport modes. Also this strategy is partly based on the results of IMPACT.

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