UK Commission for Integrated Transport

Are we there yet? A comparison of transport in Europe:
Phase 2

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Phase 2 study (Adobe Acrobat - 1,426kb)

Executive summary

Jacobs Consultancy were commissioned by CfIT to undertake a study of international comparisons of performance in the transport sector. The work was a follow-up to an earlier study undertaken for CfIT in 2001 and consisted of three distinct elements:

A validation exercise on the results of the earlier study.

An exploration of three aspects of performance which were outside the scope of the earlier work, namely freight transport, aviation and environmental impacts of transport.

An examination of a number of issues which emerged from the earlier work and which were felt to merit closer examination.

This report summarises our response to that remit.

By its very nature any exercise in international comparisons runs the risk that data coverage, scope and quality vary significantly from country to country. It became evident during the validation exercise that some data series have been revised substantially over time - in some instances the revisions were sufficient to reverse the reported trends. Long data series for the robust analysis of sector performance can be difficult to obtain and definitions can vary from country to country. We have encountered difficulties of that sort. And in the case of some issues the Commission asked us to investigate, there is a lack of data: for instance, the main source of European data, Eurostat, has stopped publishing data on walking and cycling since 2000 because of the difficulty of obtaining reliable and consistent information.

In addition there are significant differences in the definitions adopted by the various states and in the methods used to collect data. These data limitations mean that individual results may need to be treated with some caution and the results should be regarded as giving an overall impression of trends rather than directly comparable and precise comparisons.

However, even accepting these data limitations, we believe that comparisons of performance trends and commentaries provide a useful source of information. International comparisons can be helpful in identifying common trends and, perhaps more importantly, where countries have pursued different policy courses and achieved different outcomes. Data problems should not necessarily be seen as undermining the value of international comparisons, rather they may indicate the need for more robust research.

How does the UK rate against its European peer group

Inevitably the question will be asked how does the UK compare with its European peers? Are we better or worse? Performance has many dimensions and the choice of criteria is, to some extent, subjective. The diagram below attempts to summarise UK performance compared to a peer group of other European nations on a range of performance dimensions. The UK position for each dimension represents its ranking. Each country was ranked from 1 to 9, where 1 is worst and 9 is best. The better ranking countries are thus those which feature prominently on the outer ring of Figure 1 through to Figure 3.

The seven different measures used to summarise country performance are detailed in Table 1.

Table 1: Summary indicators

Performance Measure	Indicator Used	Notes
Cycling	Passenger kms per person per year.	Increased cycling contributes positively to a population's well-being.
Walking	Passenger kms per person per year.	Increased walking contributes positively to a population's well-being.
NO_x^[1]	Tonnes emitted per head.	Pollutant indicator.
CO₂	Tonnes emitted per head.	Pollutant indicator.
Fatalities	Fatalities per head.	Indicator of traffic incidents.
Mobility	Passenger-kms per head completed by passenger cars.	Indicator of the extent to which people travel.
Market Share	Share of passenger-kms completed by passenger cars (in total motorised transport).	Indicator of the degree to which private cars are used to travel (as against other motorised modes).

High measures of 'Cycling', 'Walking', and 'Mobility' are positive attributes while a country would want to score low on 'NO_X', 'CO₂', 'Fatalities' and 'Market Share'.

Almost inevitably the conclusion is that the UK does well in some areas and badly in others. Compared to other broadly comparable countries the UK scores well on measures of road safety, local and global emissions and much less well in terms of car dependency and measures of healthy transport such as the propensity to walk and cycle. The UK generally scores well compared to other large countries but there may be lessons to learn from countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark which perform well on safety, health and environment measures.