Grounding transport planning on principles of social justice

Abstract

Transport modeling and cost-bene?t analysis are two key tools used in trans-port planning. Both tools have been adapted substantially to cope with thechallenges posed by the goal of sustainable development. However, the changeshave primarily focused on the negative environmental impacts of the transportsector. Hardly any atention has been paid to another key dimension of sustain-able development: social justice. This paper critically analyzes the two toolsfrom this perspective. It concludes that transport modeling is implicitly basedon the distributive principle of demand. Given the importance of mobility incurrent society, it is suggested to replace current demand-based approaches by transport modeling that is based on the principle of need. Likewise, cost- bene?t analysis has a built-in distributive mechanism that structurally favorstransport improvements for highly mobile groups. This problem could besolved by replacing travel time savings by so-called accessibility gains as thekey bene?t taken into account in cost-bene?t analysis. If the suggested changeswere realized, both transport modeling and cost-bene?t analysis could becomekey tools for promoting sustainable transport.