Environmental Policy Integration in Urban Passenger Transport Sector - An assessment of coordination mechanisms across European cities

Abstract

Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) represents a policy principle and procedure to minimize the negative environmental impacts of sector policy measures by addressing these impacts at the early stages of policy formulation. Despite the increasing support for EPI, a number of case studies show that EPI has not yet achieved satisfactory levels of adoption. In addition, few studies have been conducted to measure and explain EPI adoption and effectiveness over a large number of units of analysis. In this consideration, this master thesis dissertation aimed to perform an evaluative analysis of EPI, both at the procedural and output level, across several European cities, with a focus on the urban passenger transport sector. The research was designed to unveil the current stand point of EPI in urban passenger transport policies across European cities and to seek explanations for different ranks of EPI adoption, both at procedural and output levels.

The research hypothesized that more polycentric forms of environmental governance, represented by the multi-scale, multi sector and multi-actor tools Coordination Mechanisms promoting EPI (CMEPI), would trigger a higher adoption and effectiveness of Environmentally Friendly Urban Passenger Transport Measures (EFUPTM). In addition it was hypothesized that contextual factors exerted high influence on the adoption of coordination mechanisms promoting EPI by local actors. An on-line survey was built and constituted the research method of analysis, in which the data retrieved was mainly of ordinal nature.

Research findings evidence a higher adoption of government based CMEPI, followed by civil society ones. Market based CMEPI are, generally, rarely adopted. In terms of EFUPTM, measures promoting modal shift towards public transportation were the most common, followed by integrative land-use and transport policies, and cycling and walking measures. Of rarely adoption are urban road pricing measures. The research concludes that the set of polycentric CMEPI presented by the research stands for higher adoption of EFUPTP, when exogenous conditions (as legitimacy and financial resources) are favourable. In addition, research findings also evidence that a higher adoption of CMEPI is very dependent of contextual factors.