National Transport Planning - sustainability, institutions, tools

A widespread consensus exists internationally and in Denmark about the relevance of pursuing goals for sustainable transport development but only limited research about how national transportation planning can become a pillar in this process. The goal of SUSTAIN is to expand this research and consolidate a framework on three core domains for a National Sustainable Transport Planning (NSTP): 1) sustainability, 2) institutions and 3) tools. Research within these three domains will address the following questions: How can the concept of sustainability be operationalised and transformed into strategic performance measures for national transport planning? How can these types of knowledge about organisational forms and planning processes contribute to the achievement of such sustainability measures? And how can these new types of knowledge be built into new model-based planning tools that can help advance the strategic planning in the desired sustainable direction?
An important feature of SUSTAIN is that it will seek to combine the results of social and technical sciences in planning research with extensive policy relevant knowledge in dialogue with practitioners and international experts. Furthermore, the SUSTAIN research will be under¬pinned by multi-faceted case research based on both Danish and international cases. Close connection with ongoing Danish planning practice will serve to demonstrate the potential of the formulated NSTP framework, which is expected to have a broad strategic and policy-oriented appeal and impact on promoting future sustainable transport.