The Effectiveness of Strategies to Reduce External Costs from Commuting in Central Europe

Transportation is a major source of both primary pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and has been hence frequently the object of past analyses at several levels. This paper examines the outcomes of numerous previous strategies that dealt with one or more of the multiple dimensions of commuting (green technologies, transport management, urban planning and behavior changes etc.) to check their results, and to introduce the first outcomes of the European project SMART-COMMUTING. The core of the paper is the accurate description of such strategies, including the estimation of the emission ranges under different modal scenarios in the different locations. The discussion regards on the other hand their efficiency to reduce the external costs of commuting, with the aim of offering transport planners, stakeholders and policy makers a way of substantiating their future strategies about commuting.